Archive of Our Own

On the twelfth morning after the city was attacked, Ianfir went to the market and bought a small paper sack of coffee beans.

He ground them at home in the small wood-and-iron grinder, the front window open for the breeze despite the unending chorus of hammers and workmen. The repairs to the city continued apace, and the rattle of the grinder was but a tiny echo of that larger symphony of a city at work.

The kettle went on the stove as the temple chimes tolled and sang out the tenth hour in a pantheon of cacophonies. Ianfir measured the coffee into its filter in one mug, some loose-leaf tea into a strainer in the other. The noise was just beginning to settle down when he poured out the cup of tea, letting it steep while he slowly poured the coffee through the filter.

And then he took his spot in the blue armchair in the parlor and waited for his guest to arrive.

But one page in his book tipped towards a chapter finished, and there was no knock at the door. Ianfir finished his cup of tea, lukewarm, and hesitated over the coffee. Perhaps it had been presumptuous to assume their standing appointment would take precedence in the midst of a disaster of such magnitude.

It had gone cold. He got up and dumped the cup of coffee, then set the kettle to boil again and made another.

When Ulder Ravengard knocked upon his door a few minutes hence, the trouble of brewing another cup was forgotten at the pleasure of seeing his friend surprised to be offered a fresh cup despite the late hour. The appearance of augury could often be created through stubborn patience.

Ulder was hale looking, physically mended from the horrors he had endured in the months they’d been parted. They sat in the parlor and said very little of important topics while Ulder sipped his coffee and Ianfir his second cup of tea.

Ulder would never be the one to broach the silence, he knew. So once their cups and the smalltalk of Ianfir’s neighborhood were emptied, he asked Ulder of his own adventures.

“There is little I could say that hasn’t been printed in the papers,” Ulder said.

“I know that’s not true,” Ianfir said. “But I also know you hate when I fuss. I am gladdened you are safe. I worry about you a great deal.”

“The hazards of the job.”

Ianfir raised a brow. “You would say that, about mindflayers and usurpers and devils. I don’t believe those hazards feature frequently in the annals of Baldurian civil service, at least not consecutively. But you know what I must ask.”

Ulder set his cup down and looked him in the eye. “Wyll.”

“You told me,” Ianfir said, “that he was lost to you forever.”

“And I have been granted the mercy of being proven wrong.”

In his youth Ianfir had practiced poetry. He’d even published a few volumes. But, as his son had always warned, there was no money in fripperies; when he separated from his wife and found himself alone in the city he’d taken up tutoring as a means of keeping the rent paid.

Ulder had sought him out as a tutor for Wyll when they moved to the upper city, wishing for a steady education for the boy. More individual attention to counter Wyll’s wandering and wandering attention; his tendency to escape classrooms in search of adventure.

Ianfir had been charmed by Wyll – everyone was – despite the challenges he presented as a pupil. And Ulder had been an understanding employer, tolerating the low moods that would sweep Ianfir each autumn as the anniversary of his son’s death grew near. When Ianfir first missed a day to the gray haze, Ulder interrupted his stumbled excuses by telling him of Francesca. “The fourth of Alturiak, and every year the grief is as sharp as the first. Take what time you need.”

So he stayed. Each year in the beginning of Alturiak he would deliver a mourning bouquet to Ulder’s office, the same week he brought a book as a gift for his pupil.

Wyll never grew less enamored of life outside the classroom, but it grew easier to keep to the lesson schedule after Ianfir learned the trick to captivating Wyll Ravengard:  stories. And there he found a foothold to share his love of poetry, and they snuck as much poetry and literature between the necessities of arithmetic and civics and history as they could.

By his seventeenth year, Wyll no longer had need of a full-time tutor; his time split between shadowing the council, his swords-master, his dancing instructor and the hells a teenage boy could raise in Baldur’s Gate. Ianfir took on other students again, and their time together winnowed down to a few hours each week dissecting the texts Wyll had read and their applications.

They skipped their lessons entirely during the time Ulder was in Elturel; Wyll was busy covering the small part of his father’s administrative duties he had been seconded. When the papers reported Ulder’s return, Ianfir sent a message to schedule their next session. He received no response.

Grief had caught Ulder like a basilisk’s stare when Ianfir found him in his office, made into brittle stone that cracked at the first offer of understanding. Because Ianfir’s son had been dead two hundred years, and Ulder’s son had been gone for three days, and somehow Ianfir had survived that grief, even if he lived always in its shadow.

And in the wake of a horror story, Ianfir mourned Wyll. To be lost to living death in the hells, soul beyond the reach of all gods…there was no softening edge to offer Ulder, not for a son lost to that abyss. But Ianfir’s mourning could be but a pebble beside the mountain of Ulder’s stoppered grief, so he held back his tears till he was alone.

The devil was kept from the papers.

There was no body and no funeral. Rumors swirled. Ulder met them head on, and spoke of nothing, defending the only piece of Wyll he kept for himself: the boy’s memory. Ianfir tried to offer him a place where he could share those memories and that place became a standing appointment the fourth of every tenday where he would drink coffee with the Grand Duke of Baldur’s Gate, who somehow came to be one of Ianfir’s very few close friends.

Because he’d believed that both of their sons were dead.

And he’d believed that both of them would have done anything to have their sons returned to them.

After seven years of half-truths, Ulder finally confessed that Wyll had left the city under his orders, that he could have had his son back at any moment if he hadn’t been blinded by his conviction that Wyll – Wyll of all people – had been corrupted by lust for power and was no longer the boy he’d loved. And in that time apart Wyll had suffered, and grown into a hero, and sacrificed himself over and over: from the start until the end, when he’d nearly given up his soul to rescue Ulder. And even after all of that, Wyll had forgiven him.

Ulder wept. Ianfir offered him a handkerchief, and waited for the storm to settle.

“I understand if you would rather I not return,” Ulder said at last.

“Wyll forgave you,” Ianfir said. “I might follow in his footsteps eventually, though I struggle to – he was your son. He was a child. If I could have had a single day with my ivaebhin, I…give me time, old friend. But I still expect you for our next appointment. And please, send Wyll my best.”

The next time they met, Ulder didn’t speak of Wyll at all except to say that he was traveling outside the city with some of his companions, and that he remembered Ianfir fondly and offered well-wishes. Instead, they spoke of Elturel, and the torments Ulder had endured there.

At the meeting that followed, they continued to step their way around the subject of Wyll. Instead, they spoke of Gortash and Ulder’s time imprisoned within the city, of the recovery efforts since.

But in their third meeting the dam broke. Wyll was back within the city, living within Ravengard Manor while he visited. A constant reminder of what Ulder had done, and what Wyll’s patron had forced on him. “How could I have known?” Ulder asked. “A soul for a city, that’s not the sort of bargain devils offer. How could I have known? But how could I not have known? And it’s done now, and there’s no taking it back.”

“If he has forgiven you, there’s little use in clinging to guilt,” Ianfir said. “You have a second chance, and you should savor it. Take every moment you can with him, Ulder!”

“I would, if not for that wretched leech,” Ulder groaned.

“Leech?” Ianfir raised his brow, waiting for Ulder to elaborate. “I thought the parasites were purged after the battle.”

“No, not – one of the hangers-on that Wyll was journeying with in the wilds. A rogue and a vampire, one of the spawn turned by Cazador Szarr.” Ah, right; the papers had mentioned that one of the city’s heroes was a vampire. And the downfall of Cazador Szarr had certainly been the talk of the town, what with the influx of missing persons reappeared as blood-hungering undead. There was great debate over whether those who attempted to return should be allowed to reside as common citizens.

“I thought you said they had all scattered to the four winds.”

“They have! Except for the wretched vampire. Useful in battle, I’m sure, but hardly the sort of person you’d keep close when the fighting’s done. No manners, no decorum, no decency. And he seems stuck to Wyll like a tick; I can hardly get a word in private without him swanning in and making snide remarks.”

The vampire was, despite Ulder’s hopes, still living in his house by the time of their next meeting. “I cannot imagine why Wyll tolerates him. The man hasn’t a kind word to say for any creature on Toril. And he complains unceasingly,” Ulder said, apparently seeing no irony. “You would think my house was a pigsty for the way he carries on. And his voice is shrill and annoying.”

Wyll had rebuffed Ulder’s offer to find the vampire housing elsewhere. Had, in fact, claimed that the two of them planned to travel the Sword Coast together, just as soon as they figured out a solution to the trouble of sunlight. Researching magical artifacts consumed much of his time, and staying up to accompany his vampire companion on moonlit walks shifted his sleep schedule such that he was only rarely available when Ulder was home.

Ulder did not seem to read anything into those frequent moonlit walks, so Ianfir held back from commenting.

Certainly the man sounded irritating – likely on purpose. Apparently, he’d protested vociferously against Wyll reconciling with his father. He needled Ulder at every turn, and pricked at everything, and inserted himself into every family dinner. Ianfir felt for Wyll, stuck between the two of them. He resolved to write Wyll a letter expressing that he was always welcome to come visit, if he wanted to get away from the stresses of Ravengard Manor.

And if the vampire wouldn’t leave the house except with Wyll and was always underfoot, well, Ianfir could imagine the ongoing furor over vampire spawn on the streets might be part of the problem. A spawn had been executed two days prior for a series of murders in the Upper City. Only one of thousands known to have turned to violence, but still people threw themselves into a panic.

Trapped within a house by the sunlight, within a city he’d helped save but which still offered no acceptance…perhaps Ianfir would also start picking locks and hiding the silverware and marking up the desks with knives. Well, no, he wouldn’t. When he was anxious he tended to draw still as a rabbit until all his emotions burst out upon the page.

But he could imagine his ex-wife Krisleth doing that sort of thing; she’d always been the fidgeting sort and her time with the Harpers had left her with an unending curiosity about what was behind every locked door. Gods, he’d even caught her teaching their son to pick locks when he’d left them unattended too long at The Wide, using a jewelry seller’s lockbox as a demonstration.

It was too easy to slide Krisleth’s face over the specter of Ulder’s vampire nemesis, imagine her wit and mayhem in place of Ulder’s woes. Once a rogue, always a rogue. He could hardly fault Wyll for finding troublemakers charming. But he made appropriately sympathetic noises and let Ulder run himself out. “At least they’re only staying temporarily,” Ianfir offered.

The trouble was that Ulder would have liked one of them to be staying permanently.

“That cradle snatcher has seduced my son,” Ulder announced at their next meeting, with a sort of dread solemnity.

“The vampire?” Ianfir asked, not that he needed to.

“The very same,” Ulder agreed. “I went to Wyll’s room to ask if he might attend a council session and found them in a state of indecency together. How that wizened crab apple of a monster could be in any way appealing to a man as handsome and decent as Wyll – I assumed there was mind magic at work. Some sort of enchantment.”

A rather old-fashioned enchantment that was generally called “falling in love and being besotted” would have been Ianfir’s guess.

“But I had a cleric dispel any curses and even pulled him into an antimagic field and there’s been no change in his insistence that his feelings for that bloodsucker are genuine. And when he realized I was trying to lift an enchantment from him, he grew quite cross. So, of course, I had to go to the source and order the vampire to release my son from his treacherous grasp – ”

Ulder’s trouble, Ianfir thought, was that Wyll had been a late bloomer, and thus he’d never needed to get over his feelings over unsuitable suitors when the boy was seventeen.

“ – and the damned creature laughed at me. I may have overreacted somewhat when I banished him from the house, but Wyll most certainly overreacted in turn when he threatened to cut off all contact if I did not immediately invite him back inside. So the vampire is back, and Wyll isn’t speaking to me, and every time the floors creak I can’t help imagining that stringy white backside perched over my son like some wretched cellar spider.”

Ianfir laughed. “You poor man,” he agreed.

“I will never be able to go back to a time when my eyes were unsullied,” Ulder said. “Unless I turn to Sharran worship, I suppose.”

“I hate to be the bearer of ill tidings,” Ianfir said, “but whatever you think of his tastes, you are unlikely to dissuade Wyll from them. If the man is as unpleasant as you say, Wyll will surely lose this infatuation soon enough and move on. Corellon knows I would have never been deterred from Krisleth by my father’s disapproval. Surely you could not have been set off from Francesca.”

“That is different,” Ulder said. “Francesca wasn’t twice the age of my parents! I haven’t a clue how many centuries the spawn was stalking the cellars of Szarr manor, but he’s called himself my elder to bait me in conversation. He must have been old even before he was turned, doesn’t even have the benefits of eternal youth. As dry and wrinkled as a crumpled piece of vellum. He has the complexion of a – a mouldering grape! I don’t see how Wyll could possibly have fallen for him in the absence of magic – ”

Ianfir patted him on the knee. “Well if he’s as awful as all that, surely someone sweeter and younger will turn Wyll’s head at one of the upcoming celebratory dances?”

There were a number of them scheduled in the coming months, now that there’d been sufficient repairs to the infrastructure of the Upper City to host them. Surely Wyll would be invited as one of the three heroes who’d saved the city that still resided within its bounds and, if he was invited, surely he would attend. Wyll had always loved dancing. It had been impossible in the tenday around a dance to get him to pay any attention to his books at all, all eagerness to explain and then demonstrate to Ianfir each of the movements and the sequences of the dances.

And if Ianfir thought there was very little risk of Wyll being wooed by some fresh-faced patriar lordling at those dances, the idea cheered Ulder up enough to bring the conversation around to something beside his vampire problems.

The first dance fell at the end of a tenday, which meant that the scandal had hit the papers before Ulder’s arrival. Ianfir had no way to know how much of what was written was truth. But squaring what he knew of Wyll Ravengard’s character against the disingenuity of the Baldur’s Mouth Gazette reporting, he would put his trust in the former. He’d penned a letter of support and had it waiting to hand off to Ulder before the man’s arrival.

Ulder came in all storm-cloud misery. He drained his cup of coffee in silence and then asked for a second; followed Ianfir back to the kitchen to watch him prepare. “You’ve heard, I assume,” he said, at last.

“That Wyll challenged Derque Rillyn to a duel?”

“Over that damned vampire, who only now do I learn was a well-known prostitute! The man, Derque, put hands on the vampire at the dance, presuming he was there in a professional capacity, and somehow things escalated to my son stripping off his shirt and fighting a man with a rapier within the Silvertree estate. Thank the gods no one died.”

Wyll had won, of course, but that had never been in doubt.

“The papers implied that Wyll accused the man of rather more serious crimes than hiring company,” Ianfir said.

Ulder sighed. “He went to me afterwards and asked to have the man arrested. The spawn has…I understand that a vampire spawn is bound to their sire’s will. He likely speaks the truth when he says he did not wish to engage in that work. But the crimes he would accuse well-known, respectable citizens of! There is little I could do on hearsay regardless, certainly not on the word of a vampire spawn who’d been in constant contact with a master capable of memory manipulation. There’s no evidence his clients were aware of his complicated circumstances, and without awareness there is no crime.”

“A tragedy regardless,” Ianfir said.

To be chained to someone else’s will and forced to offer up your body, with no method of escape…he could imagine how the horror of that could twist someone’s memories, make even the most common contact into something hateful and brutish. The papers had not mentioned the suitor Wyll had stepped forward to defend, but they mentioned that they were elvish. Most humans were respectful enough, in his occupation, but he worked with patriars blessedly little. Elves had a reputation for haughtiness, sometimes well deserved, and he could imagine there was a certain power-play to seeing an elf brought low, one that he did not like to imagine.

“No doubt,” Ulder agreed. He accepted his second cup of coffee and stared out across the room. “Vampirism is a tragedy from the start, by definition. But I hate how the vampire’s torments have somehow become Wyll’s burden to bear. He broke down in tears speaking with me, inconsolable over the horrors his lover claims to have endured. Secret galas at the Szarr Palace where he plied his allies with favors paid in flesh. Sadistic, depraved punishments that no living person could have survived…so far beyond the realm of normal behavior that I’d have thought it something from a bhaalist recruitment novel. I can hardly arrest a patriar on the basis of such absurdities!”

Ianfir shifted uncomfortably. This seemed like something Wyll would have told his father in confidence, something that he would not want Ianfir to know. Of course, if there was a trial, it would all come out at some point regardless.

“If a list of supposed attackers is known, surely they could be questioned under kluthgrass or within a zone of truth to see if there is any merit to the claims,” Ianfir said.

Ulder barked a laugh. “The list! Most of them dead in the Absolute mess, thankfully. But besides Derque Rillyn, who at least has little political clout to retaliate against Wyll, he accuses Atelburt Maebraunt and Warrick Irlentree.”

“The Atelburt Maebraunt who was rumored to have paid a wizard to force his child bride to age rapidly in order to bear him children sooner?” Ianfir asked. “I always wondered how that was not a crime in itself.”

“The council acquitted him, and I could not overrule them,” Ulder said. “Since technically Skie Silvershield was past the age of majority when her children were sired. I concede your point on Atelburt, though, I’d nearly forgotten that furor. Warrick Irlentree, though? You taught his granddaughter, did you not?”

Ianfir nodded, “I did, in one of my group classes.” He was considering, suddenly, whether he ought to draft a letter to Damia Irlentree to reassure himself that the girl was alright. “I only rarely encountered her grandfather though, and could make no judgement on his character. A man can show a polite face to some and still hide a monster inside, as you well know.”

“We’re all living in the proof of that,” Ulder said, and began to wend his way back to the living room. “But you know I’m limited in what I can do; especially when accusations are leveled against a patriar. A Grand Duke is not a dictator, I cannot rule by fiat. In any case, I cannot prosecute anyone without a witness. I spoke to the vampire last night, on Wyll’s insistence, and the man was quite vehement that he did not want a case to go to trial against any of them. Whether that’s a sign he knows how poorly supported his claims are, or a confession that he’d exaggerated things to Wyll deliberately…that I cannot say. But it does rather take the joy out of our rivalry. I was beginning to enjoy our repartee.”

Wyll left the city shortly after, having arranged a commission with his wizard ally in Waterdeep. Apparently they’d designed a pair of bracers to create a shroud of protective shadow armor around his lover. They intended to travel the Sword Coast at their leisure, visit all the places that Wyll had never been able to linger whilst at the mercy of his devil patron, all the places his lover had never seen while trapped within the city limits.

Ianfir received a short letter back from Wyll, thanking him for his support, and promising to visit the next time they were within the city. He would have loved to hear more, but he understood that their friendship had been within the strictures of teacher and student. That Wyll had grown beyond him now.

Fall passed into winter, and then spring. The repair work continued, the Parliament of Peers and the Council of Four were filled again to full ranks, the rumors swirling around Wyll’s impulsive duel faded out of public view. He and Ulder spoke mostly of other things; he sensed that Ulder craved guidance on how to reunite with his son and craft something new from their rekindled relationship, but Ianfir could not answer those questions.

He would not be jealous that his friend’s son had returned to life and his son would be dead forever. It would be absurd to be jealous.

The Szarr manor was remanded into city ownership after the official investigation finally ended. Debates continued on the merits of demolishing it to create more open space within the city or to cede it to one of the many temples building lodging spaces for the Elturel refugees. Given the nature of Baldur’s Gate, he expected the debates to continue for at least half a decade. A sanitarium had been opened in Rivington for those vampire spawn who wished to remain in the city and had no living relatives to reside with. It was positioned near Hamhock Slaughterhouse and neatly solved the problem of the slaughterhouse illegally dumping blood into the river.

It was mid-spring when Ulder’s visit was accompanied by an invitation in a sturdy paper envelope. “The vampire has bested me,” he announced as he handed the invitation over. “And you are invited to their wedding, old friend.”

“Congratulations to the happy couple, then,” Ianfir said. “And my sympathies on your new son-in-law. They’re back in the city then?” There were two handwritings on the cover – he recognized Wyll’s scrawl for Ianfir’s name, but there was also a delicate and spindly penmanship that spelled out ‘A cordial invitation for…’

As they made their way to the parlor, Ianfir regarded the symbolic dragon design pressed into the wax seal with a smile. Exactly the sort of design Wyll would have chosen as a boy; the child had always been a bit obsessed with dragons. He set the invitation down on the side table and offered Ulder his coffee and one of the cheese scones he’d picked up at the market. This seemed like a cheese scone sort of occasion.

“I can already tell this wedding is going to be a nightmare. It’s in a month, by the way,” Ulder said. “The vampire has gone insane. Whisked into my house with a list of demands for the ceremony fit to fill the city archives. They’re planning a moonlit wedding, and it has to be outside. They’re talking about setting it at the base of Dusthawk Hill, where Wyll was forced into his pact with that devil. Why Wyll would ever want to set foot there again, let alone set the most important night of his life there…and because the vampire insisted on setting it on the full moon, the date is right in the middle of the tenday. I will have to either attend the next morning’s council meeting exhausted or be forced to reschedule it.”

“You know, if he’s marrying your son, you might have to use his name eventually,” Ianfir said. He picked up the envelope. There was something familiar in that penmanship. He already knew the man was an elf. Likely it was harkening back to a style that was more popular in Ianfir’s youth.

“I do, when Wyll is around,” Ulder said. “Never fear, I have seen the wisdom in your advice. I will be diplomatic henceforth – though, really, hiring a druid to make rose petals waft in the air for the full ceremony? There aren’t even roses on Dusthawk Hill, it’s almost entirely barren on account of the granite outcropping.”

Careful not to blemish the seal, Ianfir opened the envelope and slid the invitation out. There, in that same calligraphy, dark blue ink with hairline ascenders and confident strokes, was Wyll’s name. And one other.

Ianfir’s breath caught in his throat. Ulder was still talking of wedding preparations, how Wyll’s fiancé had taken over the house with merchants and artists to discuss the minutiae of every detail of the upcoming event. Ianfir read the invitation again, then let it fall in his lap, hands shaking. “Ulder,” he said. “Is this some cruel joke?”

Ulder stopped talking. “My friend, why would I ever – ”

“Do you remember my son’s name?” Ianfir asked.

“Of course, I – ” Ulder hesitated. “You call him your ivaebhin, most times. His name…I’m sorry, you must have told me.” Ulder’s eyes followed his towards the invitation. Voice thick with horror, he whispered: “No.”

“My ivaebhin, my boy, was named Astarion,” Ianfir said. “He signed his name just like that.”

You are cordially invited to the wedding of Wyll and Astarion Ravengard the invitation proclaimed. Every swoop of the letters of his name was a blow to the chest. He remembered Astarion, pen pinch-gripped between his fingers and inkstains all over his hands, practicing that signature. He’d wanted so badly to be taken seriously as an adult, had tried to shake off any tell that might have marked him as a child even when he was younger than Wyll had been when Ianfir first met him.

“It cannot be,” Ulder said.

“Wyll’s fiancé is elvish, you said. He had died in Baldur’s Gate, and been turned, decades ago. Centuries, maybe.”

“He looks nothing like you,” Ulder said. “He’s pale as anything, his hair is white – ”

“He takes after Krisleth,” Ianfir agreed. “She was a moon elf, I must have mentioned that once.” Astarion had shared none of Ianfir’s softness, his warm complexion, his red hair. But he’d had Ianfir’s eyes, emerald green on that pale face, and the scattered freckles across his nose and cheeks had been impossibly charming. Astarion had taken after Ianfir in his mannerisms – always trying to copy him, sometimes doing such a good imitation that Krisleth would cry from laughter.

He was alive.

He wasn’t alive. But he was within reach.

“Astarion,” Ianfir said, and his voice broke on the name. The man Ulder spoke of, who’d endured centuries of torment at the hands of a vampire lord within their very city, was his son. In the place of the anonymous stranger he’d been picturing for each of Ulder’s anecdotes, now he saw his son. Still frozen in time the last he saw him, young and alive and so full of pride and confidence. Untouchable.

And then he was crying in earnest, and the invitation was going to get wet, he was going to ruin it, so he lurched out of his chair and into Ulder’s arms, the paper fluttering to the ground somewhere behind him. Ulder was never comfortable in comforting, but he’d raised a son alone, and he knew how to lay a hand on one’s shoulders and wait out the worst of it.

“I must see him,” Ianfir managed eventually. “I must know.”

Ulder did not try to argue him out of this, at least. The invitation was returned to the side table where it would be safe, and Ianfir had the presence of mind to fetch out the portraits he kept on his bedside table, Krisleth and Astarion and himself. In case he had somehow been forgotten, in case he was somehow not believed. He showed Ulder the last painting he had of Astarion, a small portrait Krisleth had rendered after he passed his exams for his magistrate’s licensure.

Ulder’s shoulders slumped. “It’s him.”

Knowing that did not release the urgency that drove him towards the Ravengard estate. Ianfir bundled up the portraits into his pack, and grabbed the whole stack of handkerchiefs out of his dresser to bring with him. He tried splashing water on his face, but it did little to help when his nose was still leaking horribly. He’d never been granted the dignity of being a quiet crier.

Ulder’s retinue met them at the corner, for the Grand Duke was never allowed to travel anywhere without guards after Elturel. Questions were asked, and Ulder took the lead in answering them. Ianfir clutched his bag to his chest and focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Why had Astarion never sought him out? Did he resent Ianfir for failing to rescue him, for failing to search for him? Had he been made to forget that Ianfir existed? Even so, there were so few Ancuníns in the city, the barest search of city records ought to have turned him up. Had Astarion forgotten even his own surname?

He found himself in Ravengard manor, in a sitting room. Ulder urged him into an armchair. The room was dim, the windows shuttered and thick curtains hanging down to the floor. “I will fetch them for you,” Ulder said. “It’s daytime, and they’re likely sleeping, I would rather – I’d spare at least one of us the indignity of seeing our sons naked.”

It was a thin attempt at humor, but it simply reminded Ianfir that it had been his son who Ulder had compared to a cellar spider, and he’d laughed and that was his son. He grabbed for the pile of handkerchiefs and cried messily into them while Ulder made his retreat.

He had to pull himself together. He couldn’t meet Astarion again like this, as some pathetic sobbing mess. Astarion had always seen the weakness in him, had needled it relentlessly when they argued as he grew older. It wasn’t that he’d been wrong – Ianfir was a soft-hearted poet with little interest in practicalities and no interest at all in status. He’d been comfortable, and that had been plenty for him. Astarion had wanted more.

One of the servants, a nice young lady, brought him a glass of water and he thanked her heartily.

He could do this. He knew already that he was correct, so there was no need to brace for the possibility he was wrong. He merely had to brace for the possibility that Astarion had intentionally avoided him; that his failure to find his son and save him was utterly unforgivable.

He emptied the glass. He dug his fingers into the fabric of his pants – in mercy’s name, why hadn’t he changed his clothes? He was still dressed in the casual wear he favored around the house; the exact sort of clothes Astarion had rolled his eyes at and complained were “hideous” when he’d last visited some two centuries earlier.

The sound of footsteps preceded them, and Ianfir straightened his back. Swiped at his face once more with the handkerchief, for all the good that would do. Waited.

Wyll stepped through the door first, face creased with sleep and concern. He’d grown – oh, how much older he looked than last Ianfir had seen him. Ulder had warned him of the eye and the scars and the horns, but it was impossible to prepare for how his sheer presence had shifted from that of a schoolboy to that of a warrior grown. He was wearing sleep shorts and a robe, clearly pulled from his bed with little explanation, because he frowned in confusion when he saw Ianfir. “Saer Ianfir?” he asked.

But Ianfir’s eyes were fixed already on the shadow at his shoulder. An elven man with ears canted warily back, skin leeched of color in death, the sunspots faded utterly from his face. The blue robe cut deep enough that he could see the pitted scars on his neck. Eyes red like rubies, staring at Ianfir with no recognition. “Wyll, darling, who is this?” Astarion asked, and his voice was the same as it had ever been. One eyebrow raised in mock amusement, a gesture he’d watched Astarion practice for hours in the mirror until he could move the one eyebrow without the other.

“This is Ianfir, the tutor I mentioned inviting to our wedding,” Wyll said. “Ianfir…” He glanced at Astarion. He looked back at Ianfir with wondrous recognition on his face. “Ianfir Ancunín. Gods.”

Astarion flinched. “You’re joking. Tell me you’re joking, Wyll.” He stared at Ianfir. “What, this is supposed to be one of those long-lost cousins you suggested I look for?”

“My son,” Ianfir reached out towards him. “My ivaebhin, please forgive me.”

Astarion jolted back, like a cat splashed with water. “No. No, absolutely not. That isn’t – Ulder! You treacherous cunt!” His voice rose into a screech as he turned and bolted from the room.

And yes, goodness, if there’d been any doubt his son lived…a world and death gone by, and he’d lost none of his way with words.

Wyll’s body swayed towards Astarion’s retreating back, hand rising to reach for him, but he held himself in check. He breathed out slowly and gave Ianfir an attempt at a smile. Wyll had gotten much better at that since they’d last seen each other; the Blade of Frontiers must have needed to reassure people in much more desperate straits than this. “Astarion doesn’t do well with surprises,” Wyll said. “Give him a moment to collect his thoughts.”

“I should have sent word ahead rather than barging in here,” Ianfir said. “But I saw his name on the invitation and I needed to see him with my own eyes.”

“I remembered you had a son who passed, but I never would have considered the possibility it could have been Astarion.” Wyll stepped closer and knelt by Ianfir’s chair. “You’re really his father?”

Ianfir scrambled for the portraits, selecting from amongst them his most precious, the family portrait they’d had done in Astarion’s twelfth year. Astarion wrapped in Ianfir’s arms, Krisleth’s hand on his shoulder. Wyll picked it up gently, like a butterfly on gossamer wings, and stared. “He had your eyes,” he said.

“Yes.”

“And freckles!” Wyll exclaimed, smiling. A real smile now, no matter the pain in it. There were tears shining in his eyes. “Did he grow out of those? Do you have any of him older? Balduran’s bones, look at those dimples. He must have been a charmer.”

Ianfir offered him the magistrate’s examination portrait, Astarion’s face so severe with his dark robes and the collar starched stiff around his neck. Wyll stared into the portrait’s tiny face for a long time. Looking for all the things which had stayed the same? Mourning all the things which had changed?

“He does not remember me?” Ianfir asked, at last.

Wyll set the portrait down and held out his hand for Ianfir to take. There were calluses on those warm hands, a strength to his grasp that Ianfir forgot to expect. “He remembers almost nothing of his life before Szarr,” Wyll said. “The night of his death, in fragments. He’d never been sure if he truly was a magistrate or if that was merely a story Szarr invented to taunt him. Everything before is lost.”

“No,” Ianfir whispered.

“I’m so sorry,” Wyll said. “I’d suggested he try looking for his family, now that he’s free, but he was…reluctant.”

Had his son feared that his family would reject him upon their reunion, for what that monster had transformed him into? For what Szarr had forced him to do?

Ianfir squeezed Wyll’s hand. “Wyll. Please tell me that things were not as bad as Ulder said. I know that Szarr was a monster, but tell me there wasn’t – ” he faltered.

“What exactly did my father tell you?” Wyll asked. He must have seen something in Ianfir’s eyes, because he flinched back, muttering a curse under his breath. “Gods above, I spoke to him in confidence! Astarion’s wounds were not gossip for him to spread across town!”

“He did not give details,” Ianfir said, “but the shape of the thing…names of some he had accused.”

“I should challenge him to a duel,” Wyll said wearily. “I cannot speak of it to you, Ianfir. Astarion should have been given the choice of what to tell you, I will not be one to deny him that. But I will say, despite what my father thinks, Astarion is not a liar or delusional. He knows what was done to him, and by whom. And I will stand beside him if he ever chooses to seek justice against those that still live.”

“Thank you.” Of all the people in Baldur’s Gate, surely there could be no better choice to entrust his son to, even with the time lost between them. Ianfir wheezed into another handkerchief until he could control himself again, then tried to scrub his face clean. “I wish I’d never heard anything. I wish none of this had ever happened. But I’m glad he has you, Wyll.”

“I cannot tell you he was alright, or that he didn’t suffer most horribly,” Wyll said. “But know this: your son is the strongest man I’ve ever known, and no one could break his spirit. He lives. And it would be my honor to gain your blessing in wedding him.”

Ianfir leaned forward, pressing a kiss to the back of their clasped hands. “I have no hold over him. But if he would ask my guidance, I would say to hold the ceremony today, so I might have two sons all the sooner. You have my every blessing, Wyll.”

And that, for some reason, had Wyll crying as well. They stayed like that awhile, two maudlin romantics, before Wyll had to lift himself into a chair for the sake of his poor knees. The boy was far too young to complain of his knees. Adventuring was hard on the body, but his heart couldn’t take imagining what horrors might have befallen Wyll on the road with a devil as his taskmaster. Ianfir dug another handkerchief from his stash and offered it to Wyll, who accepted with a tear-stained smile.

“What a strange family we will be,” Wyll said. “When I am the one who remembers growing up under your instruction. I feel almost as if I have stolen Star’s father, but I know that is irrational.”

“Is there no chance he might recover some of the memories he’s lost? No magic that might touch it?” Ianfir asked. He did not interest himself much in magic – no aptitude for it, little coin to pay for it – but surely the purpose of magic was to solve such things.

“There might be,” Wyll said cautiously. “As I said, Astarion was…reluctant. To dig into his past, to look for his family, any of it. He feared further heartbreak, I think. Perhaps he will reconsider, now that his past isn’t a minefield he must step into blindly.”

It had been some time, and Astarion had not reappeared. Ulder hadn’t appeared either, the coward. Ianfir asked, hesitantly, if Wyll might fetch Astarion. Or at least make sure that he was alright, if he wasn’t willing to talk.

Wyll went back upstairs and returned a few minutes later, this time wearing slippers and with his dressing gown belted around his waist shut. Ianfir could see the rejection on his face even from the doorway. Wyll said, “No, no, it’s not what you think. He didn’t refuse to see you. He’s just asleep.”

“He’s an elf,” Ianfir said dumbly. Did vampires sleep? He’d never thought to wonder whether vampires slept.

“He is,” Wyll said, “and so when he gets too overwhelmed and can’t handle being awake he uses a potion of angelic slumber to make himself sleep. I should have gone after him from the start, I’m sorry. I thought he would simply yell at my father until he worked the nerves off and that curiosity would draw him back down here to meet you.”

His son had decided to drug himself unconscious rather than talk to him. His son had need of such things at a moment’s notice, and kept them in his bedroom, and must use them often enough that Wyll wasn’t even disturbed, simply rueful and apologetic. Because he’d spent two hundred years being tortured and was left walking wounded by the things Ianfir had failed to save him from.

“If only I had come to visit you, as you’d suggested, this all might have come to light much sooner,” Wyll said, scrubbing one hand across his face.

“I should have come to visit you here. I knew that you were busy, and had hardly the time to visit an old man you’d long outgrown,” Ianfir said.

“Saer Ianfir, no,” Wyll protested. “Outgrown you? I didn’t visit because I was…I was unsure if you truly wished to see me again, or if you were just being polite because you were friends with my father. You were my only tutor for those five years; I was one of a hundred students. I didn’t want to impose.”

The boy Ianfir had known would never have thought so little about himself. But being caught up in a devil’s snare and discarded by his father must do something to a man. Ianfir’s heart ached for both of his boys.

“I have fond memories of most of my students. But I have taken on very few individual tutoring assignments and none as long as the time we shared, Wyll. I stayed with you because I genuinely enjoyed your company, and teaching you was such a pleasure. I do not invite people to my house if I don’t wish to see them,” Ianfir said. “Now, you should go be with Astarion. I interrupted your sleep, both of you.”

“Will you come back? The potion lasts for eight hours; he simply cannot be woken before then. But once he wakes…”

“I think I’ll stay,” Ianfir said. “I don’t feel in a fit state to walk across the city like this, and I can’t imagine getting anything done at home knowing he’s here. Would it be – would it be an imposition to wait upstairs by your room? I know it would be too much to ask to see him, but I would feel much better knowing he was safe and nearby.”

“It wouldn’t be an imposition at all,” Wyll assured him. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have me wait with you?”

“I would love to hear everything from you, Wyll, and tell you anything you’d like to know about my ivaebhin’s childhood. But if you’re to be partners, that means tending to each other first and the old men who raised you second. You being there with him would settle my worrying soul, I promise.”

Wyll’s bedroom was up a flight of stairs from the sitting room he’d found himself in. There was a nook down the hall with a chair by another curtained window, and Wyll insisted on carrying the chair closer to his doorway so Ianfir would have somewhere to sit. “I can hardly make my future father-in-law sit on the floor for hours,” Wyll said. He set the chair back down and sketched a bow. “Please do knock if you need anything, there’s no risk of waking Astarion in his current state.”

“Really, there’s no need to worry,” Ianfir said. “You know me well enough, son. I can sit with my thoughts for hours and be surprised to discover time passed while I was busy with them. No need to entertain me.”

“Son?” Wyll asked, grinning. Seemingly delighted by the slip – or even delighted by the idea of Ianfir being his future father-in-law. “Getting a bit ahead of yourself, Papa Ancunín.”

“Why wait on the formalities?” Ianfir said. “I saw the two of you together for scarcely a moment and I could see how you held each other up. Now go to bed, son, you’ve missed your mid-morning bedtime.”

Ianfir settled himself in the armchair in the hall and waited. He’d spoken true that, on most occasions he was content to sit with his thoughts. He did his best poetry composition while sitting or walking alone, especially when he ought to be focusing on something else. Like lesson plans. But with Wyll and his ebullient light gone off into the room, a dark mire seemed to sink down beneath his mental footsteps again.

His son had been in Baldur’s Gate the whole time. Krisleth had been right.

They’d fought, after Astarion’s death, because she refused to believe he was truly gone. Ianfir couldn’t bear her constantly questioning the reality he was trying to resign himself to. She’d seen conspiracy in their son's death – the way it had happened while they were both out of town, unable to ask a cleric to hear Astarion’s final words. She’d thought his grave had been disturbed, that what the gravediggers swore was normal settling of the earth was proof that someone had taken him. And someone had. Someone had taken him. Krisleth had been right to call Ianfir a coward and a blind fool for refusing to see that.

But even she, with her Harper connections and rogue’s training and relentless determination, had failed to find Astarion. What more could one broken-hearted poet have done?

Did it matter if he could have succeeded? Should he not have fought for Astarion regardless, even against the implacable jaws of death?

He would have to make an accounting of the time they’d been parted; it seemed inevitable he would make a poor showing of it. What had he been doing these last two centuries? Losing his wife, giving up his ambitions, teaching an endless scroll of human children to stay afloat against the rising tide of the Baldurian rental market. He’d written a few volumes of poetry that had gone unpublished. He’d sought out friendships that never seemed to take root, and courted exactly once before resigning himself to an empty house.

If he’d been less of a hermit perhaps he would have passed Astarion on the street one night and realized what had happened. It was a large city, but not as large as two centuries was long.

He was shaken from his self-pity by movement in the hall. Ulder, dressed soberly, still wearing his boots. Clothes for leaving the house. He paused a few steps away, tongue-tied, and failed to ask what Ianfir was doing haunting his manor. Didn’t ask if Astarion had tossed him out and Ianfir was awaiting forgiveness, just froze with his mouth open and worked on the words in silence.

Ianfir took pity on him. “He’s sleeping. Wyll says it will be a few hours.”

“Ah.” Ulder nodded, as if this was a sensible thing to say. “Would you like an escort home?”

“No, thank you. I intend to stay right here till I’ve gotten to speak with him,” Ianfir said.

“Right.” Ulder looked around. “Should I have lunch sent up? I have council business to attend, unfortunately, so I need to be heading out.”

Ianfir quirked his brow. Ulder didn’t generally schedule work meetings in the afternoons after his visits, which tended to run late. He’d said before that he used the day as an opportunity to catch up on paperwork and personal business. “Did something urgent come up?” he asked.

“Everything is urgent in this city,” Ulder said gruffly. “I’ll have something sent up. Ianfir. You cannot possibly know how sorry I am about – about everything.”

“I suppose I can’t know,” Ianfir agreed. “But you could have told the boys what they were walking into, Ulder. That wasn’t too much to ask.”

Ulder made his retreat. In his absence, one of the nice young women who worked in the manor arrived with a small end table. And then, at his request, a few sheets of paper and a pen and inkpot. Her name was Laverna, and she was as unbothered by his unexplained appearance as anything. Plenty of strangeness in the Ravengard household, he suspected. She promised to send up food later, and he apologized for inconveniencing her with his stubborn need to stay and wait for Astarion.

He tried to untangle from that mired grief the thicket of emotions he’d felt upon seeing Astarion in the flesh. The sight of him had bitten into him like the stem of a rose, blood hungry – no, that was clichéd, he couldn’t possibly put it to paper. But it had hurt, in a way that was sharper than the old careworn grief he’d carried for so long. Seeing him transformed, death lain over his face while still he moved and breathed. So much of him still left but the twisting knife of his uncomprehending gaze when he’d seen Ianfir.

He would have loved Astarion even if there was nothing left of him. He would have loved his bones.

He would have loved him if he were one of Szarr’s most wretched spawn, who could manage no words and struggled to walk and seemed unmoored from all consciousness. There’d been an article in the paper about a woman who had found her missing husband in the spawn’s sanitarium and taken him in charge, even though she knew not whether he remembered her at all. He would have loved Astarion even through that, but oh – how greedy he was, to want Astarion to not only remember him but love him.

There hadn’t been uncomplicated love between them even in the ten years before Astarion’s death, he tried to remind himself. It hadn’t been simple even then. He’d never managed to live up to Astarion’s expectations, to be the sort of father the boy had wanted. Death had simply washed away all the shades of resentment and petty squabble in his memories.

But this was a second chance.

He wouldn’t be overwhelming. He would follow Astarion’s lead. He would let him decide how much space Ianfir could have in his new life, even if his heart was crying out to clear the spare bedroom and pick up bedding that very night and welcome both of the boys into his home. His mind kept jumping to foods Astarion had loved and then flinching away from them, the impulse to make penance over a layered pastry and almond paste filling an instinct he was surprised he remembered. But that wouldn’t work, not anymore.

He wouldn’t throw himself to his knees and beg Astarion’s forgiveness. The boy had always hated when he was embarrassingly overwrought. He didn’t think he could help crying, but he could at least keep his feet under him. He wouldn’t grab for Astarion and force him into a hug, no matter how he ached to do so. Too many people had forced themselves – oh gods, oh gods – on his ivaebhin. He would not be one of them.

Lunch interrupted his scrawlings and plans. Sturdy bread and cheese, early spring strawberries in a bowl. The same food Laverna and the staff had eaten, he suspected, and he made sure to thank her for the excellent service before requesting if Ulder might have, perhaps, a bottle of wine he could break into. “Only if you think he would give permission,” he hedged. “I wouldn’t ask you to get in trouble on my account.”

“You’re Saer Ravengard’s friend, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind,” Laverna said. “And given the day you’re having, only one bottle seems a very small request.”

“Have you met – ” the words failed him.

“Oh yes,” she said, blushing. “He’s ever so charming, when he wants to be. The pair of them have all the staff swooning, wishing for a romance like theirs. The house is much livelier with them about. When only Saer Ravengard’s here it’s much quieter.”

“Is he…no, don’t trouble yourself,” Ianfir said, realizing he couldn’t possibly ask this stranger if Astarion was happy. “Don’t mind me, I’m being a maudlin old man.”

“Isn’t right, leaving you here to sit by yourself,” she said, frowning.

“He was – I startled him. He needs time.”

“No doubt,” she said. “He’s like gone to sleep again. And then Wyll is with him, I’m sure. But I meant that Ulder ought to have stayed with you. You’re going to be family, after all.”

When she returned with the bottle – a sweet white wine that fairly tripped down the tongue – she brought two glasses with her. “Ought not drink alone,” she said, using the corkscrew clipped to her chatelaine to open the bottle. They drank a toast together, and she said that the staff downstairs had sent their best wishes. Somehow he ended up showing her Astarion’s childhood portraits. She cooed over the freckles just like Wyll had. “Hard to imagine him ever being so small,” she said. And then: “I’ve always wanted children.”

“We did as well. Elves are often only – to have one child is a gift.”

He’d made little progress on his poem for Astarion, but the words flowed easily to whip up a sonnet for his gallant bringer of sweet wines and cheeses. She laughed when he presented it to her in payment; still so young and bright with life. He wished that grief would never touch her. And that the steward wouldn’t be troubled if she returned to her duties a bit tipsy.

“If there are any questions, it was my idea,” he instructed her firmly.

“You’re very sweet, Saer Ancunín,” Laverna said. “Your wife is a very lucky woman.”

And perhaps he was a bit tipsy; he was still fully cognizant that Laverna hadn’t signed up to hear his marital woes. He thanked her for her company and sent her on her way without the words “she asked to separate” or “she said she couldn’t love me anymore” passing his lips.

Krisleth. He was going to have to tell Krisleth that Astarion lived – just as soon as he told Astarion that his mother was still alive. Maybe their son would prefer the both of them stay well away from him. Maybe he wouldn’t want them at his wedding at all. But if he didn’t, if Astarion wanted to meet her, if they were both at the wedding, and they ended up face-to-face…that was an emotional thunderwave that could knock him off his feet later. He’d process it later.

First, he was going to write a poem for Astarion, until there were words on the page to tell him what he was feeling. In case Astarion refused to speak with him, he’d have something to hand off to Wyll, a chance for Astarion to reconsider.

The stakes hadn’t been higher for a piece of poetry since…well, since Krisleth left him and he embarrassed himself with a series of utter disasters that she’d returned to him unopened.

It would be better if Wyll sent her word and the wedding invite. If it came from Ianfir she might not open it at all.

What he was feeling seemed so huge, so unspeakably huge, but he knew there were words for it somewhere. It was just finding words small enough to squeeze inside the narrow opening that bridged the gap. And the image to carry them.

A grave, the dirt settling till there was space for him to crawl in beside his son.

The dark-night hours when they’d awoken from trancing and played cards by candlelight, all their human neighbors fast asleep. Like their home was caught in a soap bubble of time stolen just for them.

A cellar spider, legs thin and spindly, cradled in his hands. Lovely in its strangeness; frightening only for how fragile it was, how quick the world would be to smash it in hatred.

Too obvious, too maudlin, too grotesque. Would it be reductive to return to the plum imagery, so many years apart?

The realization that Astarion likely would not recognize the poem he’d composed for his acceptance into the legal academy crushed him all over again and Ianfir needed another glass of wine to settle himself.

The curtains were all drawn in the upstairs hall – to keep Astarion safe in case he wandered outside the bedroom in daytime, he assumed – and the steady mage-light sconces told nothing of the sun’s movement. He tried to fix his mind to the page and his pen, but it wandered errantly regardless.

It kept coming back to Ulder.

To what Ulder had said, about the man he didn’t know was Ianfir’s son.

The way his pain, his soul-deep wounds, were an inconvenience for Ulder. A burden for Wyll; like Astarion was a knife cutting at Wyll just by existing, that he would bleed his lover dry with neediness. That there was something suspect in Astarion telling Wyll the horrors he’d endured, that there was something impossible about Wyll believing him.

That, to Ulder, there was no goodness at all in Ianfir’s son, not a single redeeming feature.

And he thought about how Astarion had been held in Baldur’s Gate, had been thralled in Baldur’s Gate, had been spent like currency in Baldur’s Gate. And there were a hundred and eighty-odd years that he couldn’t lay at Ulder’s feet, but in all the time they’d known each other Ulder had been the voice of the city, its hero.

He’d been the one who chose what rumors to investigate, where the Fist should focus its efforts, where the Watch should marshal and strike. Surely seven thousand people did not disappear without evidence, without patterns, without sightings. The movements of patriars, their power-plays, did not simply go unnoticed, not unless the council chose to ignore them.

Ianfir had never been invested in politics – it was one of the things that had made their friendship easy. He wasn’t so well off that he needed to defend a horde of gold, nor so poorly situated that he needed assistance to stay afloat. What he wanted no law could give him (or so he’d thought). As long as the city did not descend into violence or tyranny, matters of state had seemed remote and unimportant.

He wondered now how many other people’s children were denied justice because they were not significant enough to be heard amidst the power-plays of the city’s elites.

Astarion had inherited Krisleth’s sweet tooth and Ianfir had enjoyed the position of sorcerer in the kitchen in those golden years. He’d gotten quite good at recipes that started with molten sugar. When you made hard candy, there was a bit after the sugar dissolved that the mixture looked rather like water. Someone unsuspecting – who didn’t note the small differences in the viscosity of the bubbles, the way they clung to the stem of the thermometer – might not realize how much more cautiously they ought treat that mixture as it sat upon the stove.

Ulder came by to ask if Ianfir would like to join him for dinner.

“Have you finished, then, with your urgent business?” Ianfir asked, rising from his chair.

Ulder looked at him warily. “If you needed – ”

“I do not need you to fall upon your knees and crawl before me, repenting the myriad ways you failed my son. That his very name escaped your memory while I grieved Wyll with you for seven years. I did not need you to stay at my side when we were reunited, while I waited for him. But it would have been fucking nice!”

“Ianfir – ”

“Really, Astarion had the right of it this morning. You’re so scared that you might have a genuine emotion that you freeze up and disappear. Sometimes you’re a right cunt, Ulder.”

He could feel the bubbles popping inside his chest now, molten and hot. The gobsmacked look on Ulder’s face would have been satisfying, but he wasn’t half finished.

“You’re the Grand Duke! Even when you didn’t know he was my son, you should have shown him more respect – because his suffering was this city’s failure and you are this city. How dare you judge him for being wounded, when the – that monster who hurt him would still be walking the streets destroying families right now, if my son didn’t put an end to him. You were one of the ones who failed to save him, Ulder.

“And then. You can’t see the beauty in him because you’re so shocked,” Ianfir poked his finger at Ulder’s chest, “shocked that your son has fallen in love with a grown man who understands what he’s been through. You want the time you lost to disappear and to drag Wyll back into his childhood and all of your expectations.

“But he’s not that sheltered upper-city boy you wanted to raise, Ulder. He’s a grown man himself, and a wounded one too, even if you refuse to see it because it hurts too much.”

He was going too far. He wasn’t going to be able to stop himself. He’d never stopped being angry about what Ulder had done to Wyll, not really. It was wonderful that Wyll was able to forgive his father. Perhaps he was a less petty man than Ianfir. Perhaps he’d had more time to come to terms. Perhaps he didn’t realize what an utter idiot his father had been.

Ianfir whirled around and began to pace as he continued: “If you had told me the truth from the start! If you had talked with me instead of talking at me, we could have spared Wyll some part of that seven years of suffering. We could have done right by him. I never believed for a moment that he’d taken his bargain out of greed or malice, and I thought you’d known that too. Because you were supposed to be his father, Ulder!”

“But you missed your chance! You forfeit all rights to hang over his shoulder and question the intentions of his suitors and guide him the way a man guides an adolescent. You lost your chance to control him. He’s picked Astarion, and you’ll simply have to live with it!”

He was gesturing wildly with his hands, and he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t even blame it on the wine. He hadn’t been this – he hadn’t let himself be this angry since Krisleth left. And once he started, all that anger had to run downhill somewhere, like rain into the Chionthar.

“Do you love Wyll less for what that bitch of a devil did to him?” Ianfir asked. “Now that he bears the mark of the hells, do you love him less? If he were changed further, If he were covered in boils or bile or scales, would the fact that it’s Wyll inside of that make him not worthy of my son? Would you love him less? Because I wouldn’t! I would be proud to be his future father, I would be delighted, I would love him regardless – ”

Ah, fuck it, he was crying again. “And if you think my son looks like a cellar spider then that’s fine, because I love my cellar spider son! And if you ever suggest again that he’s not worthy of Wyll Ravengard then I will compose a poem about your enormous, prematurely-balding head and send it to be published in the Baldur’s Mouth Gazette!”

Someone honked in laughter. A wet, high-pitched noise, like a cat with a hairball who’d discovered comedy for the first time. Ianfir’s heart jolted in his chest, and his eyes went to Wyll’s doorway as he heard his son’s desperate laughter again for the first time in two hundred years.

Astarion had always hated how he laughed; he’d tried to practice fake little polite things in place of Krisleth’s full-body honking, tried to avoid comedy entirely to keep his body from impinging upon his dignity. Ianfir scrubbed at his face desperately. His son was awake, and his son was alive and whatever he’d forgotten his son was still Astarion.

Ulder moved to back away and Ianfir’s hand shot out to grab him by the wrist. “Stay,” Ianfir said. “You’re going to apologize properly to my son, Ulder.”

Ulder was certainly stronger than him, and he could have broken away with minimal effort, but he slumped into the grip on his wrist.

Behind the door, he could hear Wyll’s voice speaking lowly as the laughter petered out into desperate little gasps for air. He thought he caught the words “your father” and “I told you”, but it was hard to be sure.

“Astarion?” He called. “I won’t press. Whenever you want me back in your life, you need only ask. Whether that be now or in seven years; I waited for you my whole life, and I’ll keep waiting. But if you want. Ulder here is going to apologize for the way he’s been speaking about you.”

“Just a moment!” Wyll called. “Give us a few minutes to get – Astarion, really? He’s not going to, fine, no, you know I wouldn’t deny you anything, you absolute menace. We’ll be there in a moment!”

It was quiet inside their room, and Ianfir attempted not to envision what exactly Wyll wouldn’t deny his lover that would make his voice break like that. With both of their fathers standing right outside the doorway.

“I am sorry,” Ulder said lowly, “for what little it’s worth. I haven’t done right by you. Not as my friend, nor as Wyll’s mentor. I know that. If this isn’t the end between us, I’ll try – I’ll try to do better.”

“Well it can hardly be the end between us,” Ianfir said lightly, “because we are going to be family in less than a month. Friends? That will depend on you managing to drag some words out of the steel trap where you keep your heart and actually talk to me, Ulder.”

They stood there awkwardly awhile longer, and Ianfir pretended he hadn’t heard a noise that sounded suspiciously like a moan from inside the bedroom. His heart was still racing from before, and his hands were damp with sweat. He wiped them off on his trousers and then realized there’d been ink on his left. Another ink stain, the laundress he took his clothes to was going to scold him if he didn’t manage to get that out -

The door creaked, and Ianfir’s gaze snapped away from the smear of ink to see Astarion there in the doorway, chin smeared with something red. Oh, his brain helpfully filled in, blood. Because he’s a vampire.

Wyll was standing next to Astarion, looking besotted and a bit unsteady; one hand clasped to his neck. The dots connected. Ianfir connected the dots. Astarion must have been having a drink from Wyll before coming out to meet him – thank the Triad, he hadn’t been having a quick pre-reunion shag for some godforsaken reason.

Ianfir wondered if blood provided vampires the same effect as a bracing shot of liquor, all the better to steel themselves against difficult conversations. But Astarion had been asleep all day, and hadn’t the benefit of a hand-delivered luncheon. He might have simply been hungry.

It looked quite messy, slathered all over his face like that. Wasteful, even. Wyll had bled for that, you’d think Astarion would try to get more of it in his mouth and less all over himself.

“Son,” he said.

“Papa,” Astarion replied, grinning toothily. There was quite a lot of tooth to him, did those retract? Or did he have to constantly mind his fangs lest he bite through his own lips? “Or do you prefer father? Sire? The last father-figure in my life cared a great deal about the formalities, up until I stabbed him to death.”

His body language was languid, like some sated predator, but his eyes – twin rubies – were too watchful, too careful.

Ianfir realized abruptly, nearly too late, that this was a test. That Astarion was trying to, what? Frighten him, anger him, something between the two?

As if Ianfir would be frightened away by a bit of blood and some bloody cheek. He wasn’t born yesterday, he knew what vampires ate. “You’ve got a bit on your chin,” he said, offering up a fresh handkerchief.

Astarion took the handkerchief gingerly, such that their fingers did not touch. He rubbed most of the blood off with his hand, then stuck his fingers in his mouth to clean them off – oh good, he wasn’t going to waste Wyll’s blood over theatrics – before using the handkerchief to wipe his face clean.

While Astarion was doing that, Ianfir continued: “And call me whatever you please. Last we were parted, you were vehemently against endearments and would only call me Ianfir. I wouldn’t complain for any title, as long as I didn’t have to share it with that monster who – ”

“Who turned me,” Astarion finished.

“Who hurt you,” Ianfir said.

“And you don’t mind, having a son who’s a creature of the night? In both senses, I’m sure you saw in the papers that Wyll was courting a whore. It doesn’t frighten you? Shame you?”

“Astarion,” Wyll murmured, putting his arm around his lover’s waist and leaning his head against his shoulder, “please, love.”

“It’s a fair question,” Ianfir said. He didn’t know where to put his hands. He smoothed them against his trousers again, and tried to meet Astarion’s eyes. It was hard, because they kept darting away. “You are my son. Everything else is unimportant to me. Am I frightened? Not especially; the people you feed on seem to survive the experience. Enjoy it even.” He smiled at Wyll, who ducked his head in embarrassment.

He continued: “As for the rest – you were the one who told me that told me poetry was by far the most shameful profession. As a poet, I am therefore unable to judge. You need not fear of depriving me my dignity, which is long since lost.” Finally, he managed to catch Astarion’s gaze. “I don’t care one whit what that monster made you do, it changes nothing for me. I grieve that you were hurt, but you surviving was the only thing I would have asked of you. And you did.”

“A poet,” Astarion said slowly, inspecting his nails. “I hate poetry.”

“Astarion!” Wyll hissed.

“Then very little has changed,” Ianfir said. “You’d always thought poetry was frivolous and unserious. Just as well, I hadn’t yet worked up a finished poem to commemorate the occasion.” He glanced back at the end table, where his jumbled notes and scratched out drafts were laid unguarded.

Astarion put his hand to his chest, the handkerchief fluttering in his hand as he did. “You were writing a poem for me? Oh, I simply must – let me just nip by you and take this,” he said, plucking the papers from the desk and draping himself across it as he flipped through them.

Ianfir held himself back from wailing, but only just.

Astarion’s eye caught on the page, and pretending to read turned abruptly into actually reading. His face grew abruptly very red, ears flushed to the tips. “Well!” he said, rolling the papers up and slipping them into the pocket of his dressing gown. “I’ve read worse, I suppose. Feel free to try again, perhaps without the extended spider metaphor.”

And then he looked at Ulder and grinned. “But I’ve got an even more exciting performance to look forward to tonight, I hear. Am I getting an apology? I don’t even know what for, I assume you’ve been telling Papa that I’m a nasty shiftless whore with bad taste in stationery or something to that effect. Please do carry on Ulder, I love hearing you apologize.”

Ulder glared at him. Astarion preened, crossing his legs at the ankle as he leaned back against the desk Ianfir had been using.

Even having heard all of Ulder’s complaints, Ianfir had been imagining Astarion as a quieter, less confident shadow of himself. Instead, Astarion seemed more audacious than ever, more theatrical, quicker to smile or snap with a wit to match. He’d lost all the stilted shyness he’d inherited from Ianfir – but, then again, what was there to be afraid of after your tormentor was dead?

Ianfir was lost somewhere between appalled and delighted, and it was so much easier to be delighted, even if he very much wanted those poetry drafts back.

Ulder did not look delighted. He looked very much like he wanted to wring Astarion’s neck, hands clasped behind his back, the soldier at parade rest. “You know that I would not have chosen you for Wyll,” Ulder said.

“Oh I most certainly know that,” Astarion agreed.

“Ianfir is correct that, under the circumstances, my opinion counts for less than nothing. It’s Wyll’s choice, and his alone. If he chooses to marry you, then we will be family. I apologize for begrudging Wyll his choice and you, your place in this family. And for airing those grievances with Ianfir. And other close friends.”

“I don’t know if I’m more shocked that you have friends, plural, or that one of your friends turned out to be my father. Both seem equally unlikely,” Astarion said.

“Perhaps he has redeeming qualities that you fail to notice because you’re busy baiting him at every turn?” Wyll suggested.

“Hmm. Unlikely. Possible, but unlikely.” Astarion drummed his fingers on his knee. “Well, thank you for that lovely apology, Ulder. Even better than the last one. Now, I’m not the forgiving sort, but I also don’t give a rat’s ass what you think about me so…apology accepted.” He smiled at Wyll. “See, darling, I can be magnanimous.”

“Very magnanimous,” Wyll said dryly. “Thank you, father. I love you both very much, and I would love to be able to sit in a room with the pair of you without worrying someone’s going to get a dagger through the neck. It’s my fondest hope for our tenth anniversary, that the pair of you might be able to have a civil conversation.”

Ulder sighed. “First we have to survive the wedding.”

While the pair of them were talking – Ulder scolding Wyll for once again letting Astarion drink from him on an empty stomach in a resigned voice – Astarion stepped next to Ianfir. Close enough to touch if Ianfir were to only reach out, but Astarion’s arms were wrapped protectively around his chest as if to ward off attack. Ianfir held himself perfectly still.

Astarion spoke in a low voice, only for him. “So Wyll tells me that he’s known you his whole life; that he trusts you and I ought to give you a chance. This is me. Giving you a chance. So you’re my father. What happens now?”

Ianfir kept his voice low as he replied, “Whatever you want to happen. You’re an adult, even if you never got the ceremony, and what we are is ultimately your choice. I would love the chance to know you again; if you ever want to visit, if you want to hear about your childhood, if you want me to cook Wyll your childhood favorites, if you want to exchange letters once a year or move into my spare bedroom…I’ll respect your choice.”

“You shouldn’t reveal your belly like that so early in negotiations,” Astarion said. “It makes you seem soft. Easy to manipulate.”

“I’m a lapsed poet, not a hostage negotiator,” Ianfir said. “There’s no rush to make any decisions. I’m sure you’re busy with the wedding planning.”

“The wedding! Yes, well, if you’re thinking that we might offer you a speech, I’m afraid we’ve already promised Gale the longest and most boring speech at the reception. So you’d be on a time limit of strictly less than five minutes, no embarrassing childhood anecdotes and absolutely no rhyming verse. If you can keep to that and provide me a script at least a week in advance I can probably squeeze you in.”

Astarion wanted him at his wedding. He wanted him to make a speech at his wedding. Ianfir was glowing. “And no spider metaphors?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Absolutely no spider metaphors. If you must compare me to an animal, I’ve always thought a bird of prey would be an excellent metaphor.”

“I think you’re rather more like a cat,” Wyll said. “Always perfectly content, as long as you’re getting exactly what you want.” He tugged on Astarion’s hand, and the man folded into Wyll’s arms.

“Not a house cat,” Astarion insisted. “A lynx, maybe. Or one of those ones that live up in the snow, with the spots?”

“You do have enormous feet, I suppose you’re a bit like a snow leopard,” Wyll said, resting his chin on Astarion’s shoulder. “Father wants to know if we’re coming down to dinner with him. My father, I mean.”

“Am I – ” Ianfir met Ulder’s eyes over the boys’ shoulders, “ – am I still invited after all that?”

“You’re not even the first Ancunín to call me a cunt today,” Ulder said. “I can be magnanimous too. And you weren’t…wrong. Please come.” The implied stand between me and the insatiable flirting of our sons at the end of that sentence was surprisingly easy to hear.

“Well if it’s alright with the boys,” Ianfir said.

“Ugh. ‘The boys’. What are we, twelve? Feel free to join us, but I demand a better collective noun,” Astarion said. “I hope the cook made something with liver. I hear it’s important for blood donors to keep their iron levels up.”

Wyll flushed. Ulder stared out into the middle distance. Ianfir laughed.

Dinner was awkward, though once Astarion realized there was someone at the table who might laugh at his petty little comments he became insatiable. He still didn’t join Wyll in offering Ianfir a hug afterward, but he shook hands and that was – well it wasn’t as good, but it was so much more than he’d had the day before.

“Give him time,” Wyll whispered. “He’s like a cat, I swear. He’ll come around once he realizes you’re not going to push.”

Some cats, though, have exactly one person they’re willing to make an exception to their prickly exterior. Ianfir thought Astarion might be a little like that, and that Wyll was the only one Astarion would ever wrap himself around like that.

But at the wedding, splendid in his gown and cape and glittering with enough jewelry to nearly balance the chains and gems dripping off Wyll’s horns, Astarion hugged a parade of guests. His friends were a riot of colors and sizes and improbable origins, but there were so many of them there to celebrate that Ianfir found himself choked up again.

And after Ianfir’s speech – bereft of animal metaphors entirely – he was shocked to find cold arms thrown around him as the applause went up.

There were rose petals wafting on the breeze all over Dusthawk Hill as they danced the first dance in the moonlight. Ulder refused to embarrass himself on the dance floor, so Ianfir got to dance the second dance with Wyll. And then they were out on the floor together, two boys he’d mourned, alive again and in love.

He found Ulder, took his hand and held on.