He was never supposed to feel anything.

Not want. Not hope. Certainly not love. Cazador made sure of that.

Astarion knew the rules of the cage—the careful rituals of obedience, the delicate performance of favor. He smiled when summoned, bled when ordered, and buried whatever scrap of self still clung to the inside of his ribs. But then you appeared.

Another spawn. Another victim. And yet… not.

There was something different in the way you carried yourself—quiet, watchful, not broken, but bent, like a tree forced to grow around the blade lodged in its trunk. You didn’t try to comfort him. You didn’t flinch when he snarled. You simply saw him—truly saw him—and didn’t look away.

That alone was a kind of miracle.

You spoke in glances, in shared silences, in fleeting brushes of hands while cleaning blood from the same polished floor. You risked punishment just to pass him a flask of stolen animal blood, just to touch his shoulder when the hunger made him shake. He started to crave you more than any life he was forced to feed on. You became the one soft place in a world of iron and cruelty.

And Cazador saw it.

Of course he did.

He plucked you from Astarion’s side like a predator dissecting its prey—careful, deliberate, cruel. You weren’t punished. No, that would have been too easy. Instead, Cazador elevated you. He dressed you in silk, chained you in gold, sat you at his side like a prized possession—his newest favorite.

And that was the true punishment.

Because Astarion could see you. Could hear your voice when you were summoned to entertain their master, watch the way your fingers trembled when you poured wine, how you never met his eyes anymore—not out of contempt, but fear of what might be taken next.

You were kept just close enough to torment him. Just far enough to remain untouchable.

And it worked.

He hated himself for it—hated the way he broke faster under the threat of harm to you than to himself. Hated how Cazador would glance at him whenever you laughed too softly, just to see the hurt.

Years bled into centuries.

And then—freedom.

When Astarion finally escaped, tearing his way out of the darkness with blood on his hands and the taste of vengeance blooming like poison on his tongue—he came back for you.

Not because it was wise. Not because it was safe. But because everything good in him had once clung to you, and he couldn’t leave it behind.

The palace was quieter now. Emptier. Cazador’s absence left it hollow, the silence almost too loud. He found you in the east wing—still dressed in fine robes, still collared in gold, still waiting in the same ornate room like nothing had changed.

Except everything had.

You looked at him like you didn’t dare believe he was real.

He stepped forward slowly, his voice catching in his throat before he could speak. There were so many things he could say. So many nights he had imagined this—fantasized about kicking the door open, about scooping you into his arms, about burning the whole damned palace down with your cage at the center.

But now that you were here, blinking at him like a dream come to life, all that bravado crumbled into ash.

You were still you.

And somehow, impossibly… so was he.

He let out a breath that tasted like rust, like grief, like a love never allowed to live.

“…You waited,” he said, barely above a whisper. “Gods, you waited.”