Archive of Our Own

“So, apparently, you’re more fertile than we thought,” Wyll begins, scrutinizing his reflection.

His face moves appropriately. He looks casual as if he doesn’t care very much one way or another.

He apologizes for bringing up such a fraught issue so soon into the relationship. He offers to have an abortion, because he is truly committed to Astarion, and would rather lick a troll’s armpits than force him into parenting a child he doesn’t want. 

He admits, in the interest of honesty, that he would rather not pursue termination, though he tries to hide the extent of it. How much he truly wants this: fatherhood. He truly craves it. Always has.

Timing is an important factor in a conversation like this. Location is another. 

He enters the little bedroom of their cozy cabin and kisses Astarion awake. Astarion rubs his eyes and stretches out his graceful limbs, Wyll offers his neck, which Astarion accepts giddily. 

Afterwards, they sit at the breakfast table. Wyll puts on a kettle and loads his tea up with enough cream and sugar to make a purist wail. He finds it helps to offset the blood loss. He needs to be on top of things if he’s going to execute this conversation perfectly.

He delivers the news, careful to keep his expressions the same as they were in the mirror. The trickiest part is making eye contact with Astarion without processing how his expression changes in response to each new tidbit of information. A hint of disapproval and Wyll’s throat would close up. He would find it hard to breathe, much less talk.

When the speech is done, he allows himself to assess his partner’s body language. It is, as expected, not exactly calm. 

Astarion is gaping at him like he just grew a second head.

“You look like you have questions,” Wyll says, his heart already sinking. He hopes at the very least he didn’t scupper things by asking to keep it. It might have seemed presumptuous, he’s realizing. Might have betrayed an unseemly level of devotion.

“Yes, I have questions. Obviously,” Astarion scrubs a hand through his curls “You neglected to mention…If you go through with having the thing. It’s going to come out of your..”

“My pseudopenis?” Wyll asks, amused, “Of course. Where else would it come out, Astarion, my arsehole?”

Astarion winces, “That sounds less than pleasant.”

“Well,” Wyll takes a sip of his tea, maintaining a cool facade,  “In a natural birth it would, though I wouldn’t risk a natural birth if I could help it. In many cases, the infant is unable to tear free of the birth canal and it dies there from lack of oxygen. Then of course, if it does tear free I could die of blood loss.”

Astarion curls a protective hand around his own crotch.

Wyll knows it is cruel to poke at the discomfort normal men with for bodies like his. Still, he can’t help leaning in, elaborating, “There’s a lot of blood in a person’s nether regions, as I’m sure you know, so when it gets pow!”

Wyll slaps the table, causing Astarion to jump.

“Just completely obliterated—

Astarion covers his ears, “Wyll!”

“Sorry,” Wyll chuckles, “No, in reality, it wouldn’t be as bad as all that. We’d simply have to find a chirurgeon willing to cut it open, reach into the birth canal, and pull the babe out.”

“Cut it open. Gods, all the way open?”

Wyll makes a gesture like a flower opening its petals.

Astarion shudders, “You sure you don’t just want a dog?”

“Like I said, sweetheart, I'm open to ending it. I’d be willing to do that for you. For the sake of our future together.”

“No!” Astarion responds, just a hair too quickly, “Not on my behalf. That’s the sort of thing that breeds resentment, surely. Besides…”

He frowns, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“Besides…” Wyll prompts.

“We’d make attractive offspring,” Astarion says, staring anywhere but at him.

Wyll squints. There’s a blush creeping over his sculpted cheekbones.

“Oh,” he realizes, “You’re excited.”

“No!” Astarion objects, scowling.

Wyll raises an eyebrow at him.

“Okay,” he admits, flinging his arms wide, “A little. Spend 200 years being tortured with a fucked up facsimile of family and maybe sometimes in your rare moments of respite, you wonder to yourself what it would be like to have a version that’s real. That’s actually nice.”

“No flayings,” Wyll adds, “No murders. No devil deals, no slavery of any kind.”

“It sounds almost too good to be true,” Astarion chuckles, “But ah, I wouldn’t be any good at it. I would be, maybe, the worst possible father.”

“Worse than Bhaal?”

“I suppose not. I’d certainly be better than Cazador. And I do so like outdoing Cazador.”

“You’ve already outdone him in every way that matters, turtledove.” Wyll says, “And I am so proud of you.”

Astarion huffs, plainly unconvinced. 

“And as for me,” Wyll shakes his head.“Gods I never thought this was a possibility for me. I don’t mean biologically I mean…

He gestures vaguely.

He had always been determined to avoid passing on the cursed legacy he carried. But Withers raised him from the floor of that temple, and rewrote his body and soul, purging him of Bhaal’s dread influence. So it stood to reason, it was safe to have what he’d always longed for, ever since his first estrus, when he ruptured his urethra with a wooden hairbrush handle in his horny fervor and the subsequent medical examination revealed he was as aberrant biologically as he was mentally. 

If he could have this, for real, it would make it all worth it, even the disgust on Ulder’s face when he heard his beloathed son’s diagnosis.

“No, me neither,” Astarion’s ears pitch downwards, “But if it’s too much. If it’s too much that really is all right. I’m not letting anyone dissect my dick ever again. Hardly fair to ask you to endure what I wouldn’t.”

“I want to,” Wyll breathes, “I really do.”

Astarion doesn’t need to know quite how much he wants to. He doesn’t need to know that Wyll has been incessantly daydreaming about his cock splayed open, in bloody sections on his belly and thighs while his lover reaches a bare hand into his birth canal and draws out the gift Wyll made for him.

“So are we…” Astarion trails off, eyes flicking to Wyll’s abdomen, as though he might already see a lavish cushion of fat settled over the jut of his hips. 

“I think so,” Wyll reaches across the table to clutch hands that are already reaching for his. He can’t suppress the tears as he breathes, “Gods I think so.”

Astarion’s smile is radiant, like the shine of white dragonscale, for all there are flecks of blood on his teeth.

Six months later, their lakeside cabin is stocked with linen diapers and wool blankets the size of dish towels and gowns Astarion sewed himself. They haven’t settled on a name. Wyll suggested Karlach, in honor of the poor tiefling woman he used malicious rumors as an excuse to brutally slaughter. The last person he ever killed in cold blood, who he recalls every time he smells a flame, or hears somebody hum a simple tune. 

 Astarion just frowned, “Sounds depressing. Plus, it’s a bit low-class. Karlach.”

“Francesca, then.” His first kill, and his most consequential.

Astarion frowned harder.

Wyll was similarly unenthusiastic about Astarion’s sole suggestion, which was, “Astarianne.”

So they resolve to wait until after the birth, to wait for inspiration to strike organically. There are some people who think that’s luckier anyway, to hold off on names until the baby has shown they are strong enough to survive.

Every so often they sit under the jacaranda by the lake edge, Astarion presses a hand to Wyll’s belly and looks at him with wonder, before one of the purple blooms inevitably falls into his snowy curls and he bats it away, squawking threats at the poor tree until Wyll is nearly crying with laughter. 

Wyll cradles a pillow and imagines it’s her, a damphiric half-elf with Astarion’s ruby eyes, and his own brown skin. He tells her stories of his heroic deeds, of which there are many, a considerable amount of which are damn impressive. He tells her stories of his most depraved failures, which he also finds impressive on some level, a sick pride he cannot shake, lying like a sheet of ice over the guilt and self-loathing. Astarion is unhelpful, in this regard. He begrudges Wyll his brooding and doesn’t even try to hide his fascination at the level of skill with which he once sated his horrific urges.

After all, he points out, most of Wyll’s victims were evil. Wyll tells him that the complicated nature of morality aside, there are things that even the rankest of evildoers do not deserve. 

“If you say so,” Astarion shrugs, and leans in with a wicked gleam in his eye, “What about feet? Did you ever do any sick foot stuff?”

“Why do you ask?” Wyll disassembles, because the answer is a resounding yes, “Are you especially fond of feet?”

“No, but you are,” Astarion smirks.

Wyll rubs at the back of his neck, “Wha—

From the look Astarion is giving him denial will do him no good. He buries his head in his hands, “How could you tell?”

“You give me all those massages.”

Wyll buries his head in his hands as Astarion’s laughter rings out over the clearing, startling a pair of ravens into flight.

The child is on his mind every second of every day. He remembers the shape of her in the scrying pool at the local hedge witch’s shack, curled in on herself like a sleeping puppy. He remembers Astarion pressing an ear to his abdomen and imitating the sound of her heartbeat in an awed whisper. She’s all he’s ever longed for, the only part of his dread destiny he ever actively wanted to fulfill.

He’s felt love only rarely, first for his father, then for Astarion. Astarion of course, is his precious lodestar, his dearest love, but she’s gaining on him day by day. (He tells Astarion this because he expects to find his sour expression adorable. He does.)

He loves her, and every night he lies awake in a puddle of his own sweat and hopes she will be dead by morning. 

Every night he hears Bhaal whispering his sick congratulations, no matter how he tries to shield his ears. 

Every night he dreams up another disgusting accomplishment for her, and part of him delights in it. Perhaps it is a craving she is channeling through him, like his sudden yearning for blood. Perhaps fixing himself was never as easy as perishing on the scarlet dias and being born anew.

Six months and ten days into this unholy pregnancy, Wyll startles from a nightmare, clutching the sheets tight, only to come around to the realization that they are tacky with his urine, again. The first time it happened he had to fight back tears, but he is resigned to it now, to the familiar motions of bundling up the sea-green bedding, once vibrant, now faded from overwashing. 

He lights the lantern and picks his way through the copse of trees between their cabin and the lake, the sky just gray enough to keep him from tripping over his own feet. He washes himself and his clothes in the lake, and though the algae is slimy on his toes and the water cold around him, there is a bird in the distance warbling a pretty tune. He whistles it back, and the bird warbles again. He smiles, laying back, letting himself go weightless. Of the training regimen, Ulder raised him on, designed to teach him discipline and exhaust him past the point of bloodlust, swimming was always a favorite, after dancing. Fencing, of course, was a close third.

He hears a footstep and startles, looks up to see Astarion, who is a vision in his hunting leathers, a spray of blood adorning his cheek. Wyll will never get used to seeing those eyes light up with desire, at the sight of him. 

Astarion kneels by the shore. Wyll trusts his balance but his pulse still quickens at the sight of his love crouched so close to something that could end him, painfully, worry the skin from his bones in ribbons of stark white.

“What do we have here?” Astarion smirks.

“A hero, it seems,” Wyll answers, “Alone, naked, vulnerable.”

“And dreadfully handsome,” Astarion says. He assists Wyll in bundling the washing into its basket and toweling off, then he scoops him up in strong arms and carries him back to the cabin, ignoring his protests that he has to hang the washed things up to dry.

Wyll can’t help it! The friction of him rubbing against Astarion’s hunting leathers, the spark of embarrassment at his own nudity. Some thread of instinct is hounding him to make his pseudopenis erect, to signal his submissive ardor for the man hauling him around like a sack of potatoes.

He’s used to ignoring it—repressing the reflex desperately whenever one of his governesses scolded him, defiantly refusing to harden in the Netherbrain’s presence. 

But Astarion tells him it’s all right to show him who he is, even the bizarre parts. So in the name of honesty Wyll allows himself to become as swollen with sweet vulnerability he longs to be, and the result is unmistakable, digging into Astarion’s shoulder.

Astarion notices, and chuckles.“Half your blood is rushing to your cheeks. The other half is all down here. It’s a wonder you’re still conscious.”

“Ah, saer you’re mistaken,” Wyll replies, “Just a dagger at my belt.”

 “Really?” Astarion huffs.

 “Please,” Wyll simpers, “Don’t get the wrong idea.”

Astarion slaps his ass, not especially hard but he shrieks nonetheless kicking his legs. He pins Wyll down on the armchair in their living room, straddling his legs, holding his wrists. 

 He’s sweaty enough for an entrancing whiff of decay to cut through his perfume.

“Now that I’ve captured you, little hero what will I do with you?”

“Anything you want,” Wyll gasps. His cock twitches.

Astarion takes his time. He presses Wyll’s erection up against the swell of his belly, admiring the view, and lets it bounce away again. He pinches and tugs on Wyll’s tender nipples strokes the area around them where flat pectorals have swollen into conical protrusions which could only be described as tits.

If there’s one enduring upside to his pregnancy it’s that Astarion is fascinated with the way it’s changed his body.

“Are you craving blood again?” Astarion asks when he has Wyll lathered in sweat and squirming. 

  Wyll nods.

Astarion lifts his chin, slotting their lips together. Kissing him is excruciatingly pleasant. He is never ready for how good it will feel. His memories do the real thing no justice. 

Astarion pulls back, and raises his eyebrows, “So. You want what I’ve got. The question is: Do I feel like sharing?”

“Well,” Wyll pants, “You’re awfully fond of me.”

“Am I?”

Wyll nods, completely sure of it.

Astarion captures Wyll in an open-mouthed kiss. Wyll wraps his legs around his lover’s waist, still deferentially stiff against him. 

 Astarion is not yet physically aroused. He takes a while to warm up these days, due to the potions he’s on to mitigate hysteria. They really do seem to help him and it has the added bonus of feeling quintessentially dominant. A boot heel on his throat wouldn’t get him down half as well as the feel of him throbbing with arousal against a man whose own genitals are nearly unmoved.

Wyll strokes a finger down Astarion’s throat, feeling it spasm. Astarion told him once that feeding Wyll this way is like a very slow and satisfying session of vomiting, a bodily relief somewhere between scratching an itch and having an orgasm. 

Astarion’s back curves upwards like a startled cat cat, his face is the picture of nausea. The sight has Wyll nearly drooling. He lays a hand on Astarion’s abdomen so he can feel the muscles push the contents of Astarion’s stomach up inch by inch until finally a dribble of blood trickles from his mouth into Wyll’s. 

Wyll licks it up desperately, and there’s more where it came from. He clutches Astarion’s shoulders, distantly aware that Astarion is rocking into him, stimulating his cock, provoking it to drool slick against his leather trousers. 

 More salient at the moment is the torrent of blood. The last couple of months blood has tasted beautiful to him, sweeter than cider, quenched him better than any wine. He breathes through his nose as he swallows mouthful after mouthful. Some of the tension in his chest abates, replaced by something soft, and warm.

Astarion pulls back, a look of deep pleasure settling on his pointy little face. It is a vindication of some vampiric instinct, to nourish his mate in this way.  

Far be it from Wyll to deny Astarion satisfaction.

“Now,” Astarion reaches behind him, groping, “Should I fuck this sweet little arse, or…”

Wyll would allow him if he really wanted to, but he suspects Astarion has something else in mind. Something lit up in his eyes the first time he discovered Wyll’s peculiar anatomy, the fact that it could not be fucked without  Wyll’s active participation seemed to settle and soothe him.

Still, Wyll flatters him by begging, “Please. I’d like to feel you in my cock, if it’s all right.”

Astarion shakes his head, despairing no doubt at how polite Wyll is, even when he’s trying to be filthy.

He swirls his tongue around Wyll’s swollen glans and shoves his tongue into the puffy gape of his aroused urethra. Wyll whimpers, gripping the armrests for dear life. Astarion giggles, a sound that reverberates through his tongue. In slow circles Astarion lavishes attention on what is his, what has been his since he first held a knife to Wyll’s throat meters from the smoking wreck of the nautiloid.

Wyll pets his hair and rubs his foxlike ears which earns him a moan. Astarion works him slowly, alternating between fucking his cockhole with that talented tongue and swallowing him down deep into his velvet throat.

When Wyll is reduced to begging, Astarion takes mercy. He slicks his finger with lube and shoves it up Wyll’s ass in one blunt motion. It’s all Wyll can do to keep his thrusts polite as Astarion wraps his other hand around his shaft and flicks his tongue in and out of Wyll’s cock at a feverish pace, in time with the finger driving into his prostate. 

With a cry of Astarion’s name, he comes, releasing a small pulse of clear ejaculate.

His physical arousal abated, he’s able to retract the flesh of his cock on itself, just enough to create an appealing opening.

“Look at that,” Astarion murmurs, tracing a lube-slick finger around the loose folds of skin.“Good boy, making such a pretty little hole for me to fuck.”

 Wyll pants and Astarion stands maneuvering him into place. It is damn hard to do missionary with equipment like his, but Astarion managed to figure out a way, just because it’s how Wyll likes to make love. 

Wyll likes being the more romantic one between the two of them, but hells if Astarion doesn’t give him a run for his money now and then, without even explicitly trying.

Astarion is only half-hard-yet. His legs spread wide, he tugs himself, making unblinking eye contact with Wyll’s body. 

“What’s got you looking so smug, huh?” Wyll asks, “Proud of how fat you’ve gotten me?”

Astarion flushes, his hand speeding up, “Yes,” he admits, “Extremely.”

“Well, many have tried to breed the blade. Most of them haven’t gotten much further than hello.” Wyll grabs his free hand, kissing his knuckles. “You know, I wouldn't go to all this trouble for anyone else,”

“Ngh,” Astarion gasps, leaning hard into every stroke. “You’re mine. Mine forever. To use however I like.”

“Well, that goes without saying,” Wyll agrees.

“No,” Astarion commands desperately, “You’re going to say it.”

Wyll considers, “That I’m yours?”

“Yes.”

“And if I don’t?”

Astarion lets out an adorable growl. 

“I can’t argue with that!” Wyll concedes eagerly, “I’m yours, sweetheart.” Wyll nuzzles the back of his hand, “Always yours.”

Astarion surges forward to kiss him again, nipping his lip. It isn’t enough to draw blood, but it threatens to, and that’s enough of a thrill Wyll is nearly lightheaded.

Head swimming, Wyll gets lost in the sounds they make. He revels in the smacking of their lips, and the wet slap of Astarion’s hand until finally by their mutual effort his dick is hard as Wyll gets for him so pathetically easily.

When Astarion eases his pink-flushed cock into Wyll’s it drives out every other conscious thought, it always has. Wyll’s cock isn’t any wider than Astarion’s. There is no spare room. He is at the mercy of his own skin’s elasticity, his own ability to give. It is a stretch on the bleeding edge of pain, and gods he loves it. He is impossibly full, replete with Astarion, thin and fragile around him. He looks down to see the shape of Astarion through him, wearing him like lingerie.

He can’t help but be greedy, nudging him on with his heels. 

“Behave,” Astarion tuts, “I shouldn’t like to tear you.”

 “I am a sturdier sheath than you give me credit for,” Wyll begs.

Astarion shakes his head. “You are a cock-addled little minx who’s going to be the actual gods-damned death of me.”

But he starts moving, so that’s a point for Wyll. 

Astarion looks cute when he’s thrusting, intent concentration melting into puppyish excitement, as it sinks in that his orgasm is the only one he’s chasing. Wyll’s never come from this, and coming is beside the point. 

It is an unparalleled honor to be a means to the end of Astarion’s pleasure. That he gets to do it while also feeling like this, every corner of himself crowded into, so wonderfully infested? It’s like a dream, except he isn’t desperate to escape it.

If he could stretch this moment out forever, he would.

It is only the perking of Astarion’s lovely ears that clues Wyll in to the fact that he is moaning, a long, liquid cry that he finds himself powerless to suppress. 

He reaches up to wind his arms around Astarion’s shoulders, holding him close.

 Astarion wraps a hand around the thin, stretched skin of Wyll, spoiling them both by massaging himself through Wyll at the same time as he gives a little thrust. 

“Love you,” Wyll sobs, “Love you,”

Astarion brushes a tear from his cheek, and his eyes convey what he struggles to say, in the flayed open heat of passion.

Wyll believes him. 

After, Astarion takes longer than necessary to work himself out of Wyll, whose heart soars both at the thoughtful display of caution and the feeling of Astarion’s come, dribbling out with each painstaking inch.

He cleans them both, and brings Wyll some apple cider, which quenches almost as well as real cider, the kind with alcohol in it. He covers Wyll with a blanket as he curls up on his side, riding out a series of minor contractions. 

Wyll once insisted he did not need the fuss, that Astarion could very well leave him to put himself back together on his own time, but the look on Astarion’s face, as if he had seen a ghost, made him regret it.

It is nice to be cosseted, like the sweet thing he never was, even if it feels somewhat wrong to revel in a ritual that, he’s gathered, ties in directly to the horror of Astarion’s past.

“I couldn’t help but notice…” Astarion clears his throat. “I couldn’t help but notice you were washing your bedding again. And your nightclothes.”

Wyll thought he’d wrung out every last kernel of rotten emotion about this newest issue of his. Evidently, he was wrong. His throat goes dry, and he rasps, “I know. It’s disgusting. Sorry.”

“No, no,” Astarion murmurs. His ears flick like a startled mare’s. “It’s all right. It’s a known issue, with pregnancy, or so I’m told.”

Wyll nods. “I believe so.”

“One of the many reasons I believe you are insane for going through with this. Courageous, but absolutely cracked.”

“Would it surprise you to know this is not the first time my sanity has been called into question?”

“No,” Astarion smirks, but amusement does not deter him for long. He leans forward, fingers steepled, “Did you have that dream again?”

“The one where she kills me?” Wyll sighs, “Yes.”

It is the worst of the dreams, a fact he feels no small amount of guilt over. His own death would be no great tragedy, not like the death of an innocent.

But life is a beautiful thing. He’s always wanted to cling to it, no matter whether he deserved to or not. The urge has never been stronger now than it is now that he has Astarion, his dear one, so good to him.

In the dream, he’s back in Baldur’s gate, on the roof of an estate his family abandoned years ago, Then there’s a pressure on his back, and he’s halfway to the rocky ground before he can think. He has just enough time to look up, and see her little face lost in shadow.

It’s a little on the nose, even for a dream. After all, it’s how he killed his own mother, the kind fool who took in a strange baby left on her front steps.

 He remembers that night well. She leaned over the ramparts, pointing out constellations, and on a whim he braced his hands against her back, gave her a shove. 

It was only when she was falling that he realized he’d killed her. It was only when he heard her hit the ground that he realized he loved killing her, loved it more than stars and stories and stories and all of the brightly painted toys cluttering his bedroom.

He thought he loved it more than he loved her, in that moment, but he hadn’t yet known the totality of what she meant to him.

It was only in the months that followed, as he tried to adjust to being a monster who was treated as monsters deserved that he truly understood that killing her meant she would not be there for him anymore, never again.

Every night he’d long to hold her hand or wipe his tears in her skirts or hear her soft voice saying, “Good job, Wyll.” And he’d realize he never would, 

As an adult, it struck him that he never mourned her as a woman, just as a mother. He idolized his father, even back then. He knew all about his greatest feats of heroism. Her, he knew only by the ways in which she was useful to him. No matter how he tries to fix it, how many facts he learns about her, no matter how many times he meets people who had loved her, he still mourns her in that sick, self-serving way. He wakes from a nightmare and wishes he could turn to her for advice. Someone asks if his mother will be with him in the delivery room and he has to swallow past a lump in his throat to answer.

He considers a future where his daughter kills him, and mourns him later in the same way, mourns the role he performed for her and never the man himself. It fills him with anger he is not entitled to feel. 

He tries to hide the evidence but it’s too late. Astarion has seen it on him, stark as blood dripping from his maw.

Astarion’s eyes linger, evaluating. He settles back in his chair, “Try for something happier next time, hmm?”

No amount of trying has ever changed what Wyll dreamt. If he fell asleep over a book of saccharine fairy tales he would have saccharine fairy tale nightmares, oozing with adorable gore and didactic depravity.

Nevertheless, he bows his head and says  “I shall.”

The first three months were peaceful, is the thing. He had worries, and doubts, but no nightmares, no nightly whispers.

Until one night, in the tone of someone who knew they shouldn’t but could not resist, Bhaal cooed congratulations into his brain. 

He told himself it was a flashback or a hallucination.

Now, it starts to infest his daytimes too. 

He’s at the sink, scrubbing a day’s worth of dishes, when he gets a vision. He’s seated in a rocking chair, breastfeeding and feels he feels a sting. He expects he’s just chafing but he looks down to see she’s eaten her way through him. She’s hollowed out a path through his flesh and bone and is poised to munch on his heart.

He sees Astarion at a window,  his back to him. He seems to be holding her, rocking her gently. When he reaches Astarion he sees that there’s a dagger in his throat, his wrists flayed and tied together, and he wasn’t rocking her at all, just struggling to get free.

It’s absurd, he knows, to be afraid of a baby.

The feasibility of her actually pulling off a depraved act of murder doesn’t matter. The point is that she’s like him. She craves what he craved. Wyll thinks back to the premature wrinkles that settled into Ulder’s face at the stress of keeping him humanely imprisoned. He thinks back to how ungrateful he was, and how he still struggles to be grateful.

All the effort it took to keep his urges in check, gods but he doesn’t want to go through that for another person. And how stupid of him, to let himself get pregnant so soon after his rebirth, to throw his life away the second he had one again.

The next day goes to bathe and finds himself frantically gauging the murderous potential of the small wire basket they use to contain Astarion’s ostentatious hoard of soaps, sponges, and perfumes. 

He buries his head in his knees. One of the best parts about being free was that things that once seemed inherently fraught and exceptionally complicated became simple again. A knife was just a knife. A stone was just a stone. His pinky finger was just a pinky finger. The world was more than just things to kill and means to achieve that murder, or it had been, for a while.

He can keep himself and Astarion safe from her. He is not at a disadvantage, the way his mother was. From the day she’s born, he can throw himself wholeheartedly into containing her. He can do better for her than Ulder did for him, even. He knows what it’s like growing up in a gilded cage, he could make it tolerable.

He can’t help but feel that the distinction is moot, between this and death. What would it be but a sort of living death? A life devoid of joy, of freedom. A life of nothing but drudgery, nothing but worry.

But he caused his fair share of worry. So he owes.

Astarion is chopping vegetables: making soup for him. It is a decent arrangement, Astarion’s culinary skills are very limited, and Wyll does not have the energy to consume anything more demanding than rabbit and carrot in a slow-boiling broth.

His eyes catch on the large knife he’s using.

He can picture it as clearly as a memory: him easing the knife from the clutch of Astarion’s fist, gripping him by his curls, and sinking six inches of steel into that cold vampiric heart.

Perhaps it is a craving, perhaps it is just a thought. He flees regardless and locks himself into the restraints affixed to their headboard.

Astarion comes by when the soup is finished, and offers to feed him. 

Wyll sends him away.

The next night he hunts, and Wyll spurns his regurgitation.

He cannot bear to feed such a malicious creature, and it is a fitting punishment for his cruelty in starving her, to starve himself. 

In the morning Astarion brings breakfast and his fangs are bared, his eyes glittering. There’s a mug of blood on the tray as well.

“I can’t,” Wyll says, “Not the food and not the blood.”

“Tell me why,” Astarion demands.

Wyll turns away, unwilling to articulate the depths of his growing disdain for her.

Astarion visibly struggles to smooth his outrage. Wyll braces for a blow.

Astarion masters himself quickly. He sets the tray aside, settling in beside Wyll. “You’re scaring me lately, darling.” He rubs Wyll’s shoulder. “Tell me what’s the matter.”

“It's her,” Wyll admits.

Astarion’s brow furrows, “You worry she inherited your little quirks?”

“I know she has. Maybe it’s irrational but I am so certain she’ll be every bit the bhaalspawn I was.”

“We’ll handle it, won’t we?” Astarion asks softly, “We’ll find some way to make the little scoundrel behave.”

“I suppose we’ll have to,” Wyll sighs.

Astarion takes a slice of buttered toast, and holds it up to Wyll’s mouth, so earnestly invested it would break Wyll’s heart to refuse him. He takes a bite and continues chewing it even though it immediately becomes apparent that the underside is badly burnt.

When he’s finished, Astarion uses a corner of the bedsheet to wipe black, charcoal crumbs from his mouth. 

He feeds him another slice of toast and some and Wyll is painfully aware all the while how fraught these acts of service are for him. It should be enough. It should calm the frantic beast inside him.

But it doesn’t. The tangle of upset is unreachable. The gush of affection Astarion inspires merely lays over it, like a cloud of perfume in a filthy privy.

“I wish she would die,” Wyll admits, “Isn’t that unconscionable? I want her dead. I do.”

Astarion puts the food aside and draws his knees up to his chest. He takes a long moment, staring down at his lap, and then calm settles over him like a glamour.

“Well then,” he says, brisk as a winter breeze, “I’ll make the arrangements,”

Wyll blinks, “Arrangements?”

“You’re pregnant,” Astarion says, “You don’t want to be. It’s simple arithmetic.”

“I can’t do that.” Wyll tugs at his restraints, a nervous habit he’s never outgrown.“ I made a choice. I chose her. And now…She has fingers and toes now. Kidneys. A brain.”

“So does a rat,” Astarion scoffs, “Doesn’t mean I would allow one to nest inside of me.”

“I want a child. Just not a bhaalspawn. How can I reject her for something that isn’t her fault?”

Astarion tilts his head, candlelight cascading through his curls, “There’s a difference between treating an existing monster well and wanting to raise one,” he says, thoughtful in a way he rarely admits to being capable of, “ Not that parents always have a choice. But since you have one, make it freely, and without shame. I certainly would.”

Astarion’s hypocrisy is always maddening but now it verges on unbearable. He’s been tempted by his lover’s malevolent lunacy before but never like this. He never longed to grab onto one of his selfish schemes like an outstretched hand as he drowned in icy water.

 “You’re always going off on Ulder for banishing me,” he points out, unable to keep his voice even, “how is this any different?”

“It’s your body.”

Wyll groans, “It’s more complicated than that,”

“No,” The thrust of Astarion’s chin is imperious, set firm against any possible contradiction. “it isn’t.

For the first time, Wyll allows himself to imagine it. Someone could flush her out of him like an infection. Someone could put him under and he could wake up alone in his body, unburdened by Bhaal.

It is a heady prospect. He wants it more than anything, more even than he ever wanted to hold his infant safe in his arms, and mere months ago, he wanted that so badly he ached. 

His voice as weak as a hatchling dove, he squeaks, “Will you love me still?”

“Oh, my darling” For the first time, Astarion’s voice cracks. He raises a hand to his bound lover’s face, trailing it down his scarred cheek, “I would love you under the most dreadful circumstances. “

Astarion makes inquiries at the nearest village. Their chirurgeon is unable to reschedule on such short notice and it is difficult to find another that is willing to work with their unique situation. Nevertheless, Astarion ferrets out options. They settle on a man who is renowned for his skill and kindness. He is in Amn now, though he’ll be back in Baldur’s gate in a week.

Bhaal makes his annoyance known. Through the conduit of her he spews invective. He forces flashes of memory: things Wyll did, things he enjoyed. All to punish him for refusing to be his vessel this last time.

Wyll spends most of his time restrained but Astarion insists on best practices, letting him out as often as he’ll allow, rubbing his wrists, making him walk.

 On the third day, Bhaal goes quiet, and Wyll joins Astarion under the jacaranda again. There’s a knot of discomfort in his abdomen, but he tries to ignore it, in favor of stroking Astarion’s soft curls.

But every wave of it is worse, a feeling almost like gastrointestinal distress, but somehow more sinister. More pernicious. It’s warm out but he shivers.

Astarion lifts his head, “All right, my sweet?”

“Just a cramp,” He puts his hand to the swell of his belly, “ It stings a little. It oh. Mmm. It’s got quite a kick to it!”

Astarion fetches him a painkilling draught. Twenty minutes after his pain has only gotten worse. Astarion holds him close, stroking up and down his arms.

“We should get back inside,” Wyll says, 

Astarion agrees, helping him up, but then his nostrils flare, “You’re bleeding,” 

“Am I?” Wyll asks

Astarion slides a hand into Wyll’s underwear. His fingertips come out, slick and red. 

Wyll swallows, “I…”

Here you go. Bhaal trumpets in his head, all vicious glee Just like you wanted.

There's a tremendous squeeze, compressing his guts almost knocking him out. 

 Astarion catches him, lowering him to his knees. He puts a hand on his belly.

She rarely kicks but he feels her jostling him now, a storm of blows that in his panic seem to grow stronger and stronger.

Astaion drops to his knees before him, “Tell me what to do. Tell me you’re all right. Tell me—

“Love you,” Wyll forces out. It is too difficult to formulate a sentence any more complex than that. He feels an excruciating stretch, looks down to see his belly bulging much larger than it should, and through it the shape of something. Not a fetus, not even a baby. Something nigh incomprehensible. 

The skin just under his navel is rent in one merciless motion, and something bursts through him: a small, long-fingered foot tipped with five sharp sickle claws. 

In an explosion of flesh and viscera his abdomen bursts, splattering them both. 

 The form of the Slayer, malformed and misshapen, grows as it rises from his body, bones cracking as they warp and stretch.

He tries to make his last thought something compassionate for her, but he fails.

A secret: he often failed to accept suffering beatifically. On Dusthawk Hill, clutching his severed eye as he failed to explain the carnage to his father’s satisfaction, he was sick with indignation. Half-dead in the claws of various monsters, he pitied poor Wyll Ravengard.

He mourns himself now, a grief with a bitter edge to it.

For the first time, he’s sure he deserved a soft ending.

Astarion tries to hold  Wyll together, to resolve the sludge she’s made of the lower half of his body into a form that can be knit back together by health potions. 

The Slayer snatches him by his hair and throws him into the jacaranda. His skull thunks against the bark, his fangs tearing his tongue. He spits up blood and rolls to his feet, blinking away a stream of reflexive tears. 

Luckily for him, the monster is an impetuous thing. It lunges artlessly and he steps to the side, kicking it in the throat. It collapses onto all fours and he throws dirt in his eyes, running for the boulder where he’s buried one of his daggers. Damn Wyll, for being so antsy about the prospect of him keeping one on his person.

The slayer bounds after him, snatching him up by the leg, shredding him knee to ankle as he shrieks. He turns back towards it, latching on with his fangs. The rotten egg stench of it turns his stomach but its blood is pure, rich, and filling.

By the time it bucks him off, his leg is half-healed. 

It’s a grueling fight. He’s outmatched ten times over on strength but he makes up for it by having more effective regeneration. He lasts through having his limbs severed, and bits of his scalp torn out with his hair. It rips out a length of his intestine and tries to strangle him with it.

Dawn threatens the horizon by the time he prevails, plunges his teeth into its neck, and rips out a section of throat, thinking You sick son of a bitch that’s for Wyll!  

The Slayer bursts apart in a shower of black slime. He looks back towards Wyll, ready to go to him, though he can smell from volume of his blood, coagulating in the grass that it will do him no good.

Then he hears a cry at his feet and looks down to see his own underdeveloped larva, her yellowish-tan skin contrasting the slick black oil. 

Astarion hadn’t thought of how it would affect such a little thing to transform into the slayer. He thinks of it now, as he watches the being with its gummy proto-skin and stick-thin limbs twitch. Her bones are all misaligned, twisted. Her mouth is thrown open like she wants to cry, but all she can manage are wet, sucking noises as she tries to breathe through lungs that are splayed too wide.

He scoops her up, a trail of slime running down her back. He can tell from the way his fingers sink into her skin that his touch must hurt her badly. She glares up at him with bugged-out eyes, and he can’t help feeling the ghost of some paternal pride at her indignation.

If he drank her dry, that would be a good death. Wyll told him it was nice, slipping away as if into a pleasant dream. Her neck is too small to fit his fangs. He shifts his hold to pull her arm away from her chest, trying not to look at the bruises his attempt at a gentle clutch have stained her with. He sinks his teeth into the flesh as best he can, watching her wriggle like a caught rabbit. He takes a mouthful and she settles the way vampire victims are wont to do. 

He swallows and learns she is sweet in the cloying way of breastmilk. His tongue chases the last droplets of her on his tongue and once he realizes what he’s doing he’s overcome by a wave of nausea. He bends over her to retch, tasting her a second time, the monster in him loving the taste, even suffused with bile-

He can’t do this. He can’t pleasure himself on his dying infant’s blood. 

He can’t give her a good death. He can’t even give her a whisper of comfort as he slips away. His voice, as he tries to coo reassurances, seems to hurt her, every audible sound too loud for her little ears. 

The cleric eyes the gory sculpture Astarion has made of Wyll’s lower body.

Astarion tenses, “It’s not enough for a resurrection?”

“It is,” he says, “But people who die in such traumatic ways answer our call very rarely.”

“He’ll come back for me.” Astarion answers, completely sure of it, “He wouldn't leave me. Not like this.”

But he doesn't answer, damn him. He leaves Astarion standing there with his heart in his hands in front of a stranger, a wretched fool who tries to tell him that it’s a good thing, that it means Wyll is utterly at peace. 

  Astarion doesn’t care if Wyll is enjoying eternal bliss. It’s no excuse for abandonment. Not after all he promised.

He’s never hated someone more. 

He knows it’s a lost cause, a waste of money, and a betrayal of his late husband but he tries to raise the baby too.

She declines, perhaps unwilling to spend months aching as she grows into her body, perhaps just unaware that there is anything to life besides pain. Stupid brat. As bad as her worthless father.

People reach out and he tells them where they can stick their condolences. He sits on the roof of their cottage, which is empty of almost everything. He counts up the ways he’s been tricked in the past six months, the insipid falsehoods he’s been fooled into believing. 

The next night, by the light of a full moon, he takes the frame of the bed they shared to the lake, watching it tip to and fro before it finally seizes, and sinks below, leaving only ripples.