Would you have let me mark Astarion, then? Would he have let you mark me?
[ She doesn't want either of them, doesn't want to slide a knife between Gale and Astarion in that way. They're family, the people dearest to her here, but that feeling is muted now, buried beneath soil and the scar tissue over her heart and throat. ]
You have a group of ducklings for Charges, Gale. But I'm not one of them.
[ He didn't ask. He didn't want her. Disgusted by the men she chose, then, if she reads partake to excess correctly. ]
[ Even a loyal hound recognises what snapping fingers ought be chased or ignored (at least this early, with the mention of Astarion and his other charges only a simmering offence). ]
You’re quite aware that I don’t mean to suggest that. Or abstention, for that matter.
[ She says it to scandalise or imagine her place on a nonexistent hierarchy. In his oft sanctimonious perspective, the risk of tying her life to three — two of which have made enemies of half the House — is concerning, but ultimately secondary to the suggestion of ardour towards this foul religion. ]
No, you’re world wearier than I, and yet you approach familiar trappings as if they’re old friends.
[ service to a faith that would take from them — perhaps even to cruel masters than they’ve known. ]
[ The Shadowheart Gale has come to know would at least make an effort to explain herself to him. The tangled threads behind her decisions--Stephen's offer of his hands in penance, her choice of Tony to be petty toward Stephen and Saber both.
She has no excuse for Saber. Had she left it at Stephen, perhaps Gale wouldn't cast judgment on her. But the other two bindings were incautious at best and reckless at worse, and she feels the consequences acutely without Gale's pointed insult to injury.
Stung, faced with words on a screen and none of his warmth, Shadowheart fastens old armor. This isn't what Gale means, and she knows it. ]
Should I have given you a list of my suitors so you could pick the sweetest one?
[ Maybe, without his own protective instincts dialled higher, Gale wouldn’t press this issue. Maybe if their bodies hadn’t become battlefields upon which the cult could enact their vile magic, he would not be so wary. Maybe if he did not think they would ultimately need each other, when this trouble finishes brewing —
As it stands, he had counted on Shadowheart to be stalwart, in all this strangeness. Now, with how quickly she seeks to cast him aside, he doubts her. Not enough to give up on her — but to think twice about relying on her. This Shadowheart retreats to the dark once more.
Unsaid: Perhaps as an alternative to selecting the sharpest teeth, in the hopes they’ll bleed you dry.
[ Everything hurts here. Her body, from each wound she's healed (and those she's inflicted, just for something to fix); the way the world saps of color when she's away from Saber, the way her memories bleed with his and Stephen's and Tony's. In the months of memories stolen and memories forced upon her, it's this place where the glut of them feels unbearable. The opposite of Shar's oblivion, to plunge without barrier into the chaos of other lives in other worlds. ]
I'm not free from Shar, even after forsaking her.
The only wound I can't heal is my own. She punishes me through it, still.
I don't feel brave for what I did in the Shadowfell, Gale. I feel like a fool.
[ he wonders if, after months together here — a lifetime in the other world — and multiple conversations of this kind, she can imagine how he says her name, when she spirals so close to ledge, soft but sure. ]
Did you think the divine would not leave their marks upon us? The gods are possessive and cruel. The faith made in their image.
[ that’s why he worries about this place and the blood price they’ve enacted on each other. their intimacy feeds something here. it changed them from within.
shadowheart deserves better than to be dragged back to the brambles she barely escaped with her life and soul. they all do. ]
You were and are brave. It is only that these things are neither simple nor complete.
[ Brave. She doesn’t feel it, in this moment. Maybe bravery would be renouncing this place entirely, running into the woods—to what? Back to the manor, where the gate might shut on her again? They trade one set of shackles for another, here. Even the perilous road to Baldur’s Gate didn’t feel like this, nothing but dead ends closing in on them. ]
I know. I know it’s not simple.
Perhaps we’ve given ourselves another dormant parasite, with these scars. I already feel the pull of what I’m expected to do here. The rightness of it.
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[ She doesn't want either of them, doesn't want to slide a knife between Gale and Astarion in that way. They're family, the people dearest to her here, but that feeling is muted now, buried beneath soil and the scar tissue over her heart and throat. ]
You have a group of ducklings for Charges, Gale. But I'm not one of them.
[ He didn't ask. He didn't want her. Disgusted by the men she chose, then, if she reads partake to excess correctly. ]
no subject
You’re quite aware that I don’t mean to suggest that. Or abstention, for that matter.
[ She says it to scandalise or imagine her place on a nonexistent hierarchy. In his oft sanctimonious perspective, the risk of tying her life to three — two of which have made enemies of half the House — is concerning, but ultimately secondary to the suggestion of ardour towards this foul religion. ]
No, you’re world wearier than I, and yet you approach familiar trappings as if they’re old friends.
[ service to a faith that would take from them — perhaps even to cruel masters than they’ve known. ]
no subject
She has no excuse for Saber. Had she left it at Stephen, perhaps Gale wouldn't cast judgment on her. But the other two bindings were incautious at best and reckless at worse, and she feels the consequences acutely without Gale's pointed insult to injury.
Stung, faced with words on a screen and none of his warmth, Shadowheart fastens old armor. This isn't what Gale means, and she knows it. ]
Should I have given you a list of my suitors so you could pick the sweetest one?
[ And then, a slip of the mask already: ]
Maybe this is my lot, for leaving her.
no subject
As it stands, he had counted on Shadowheart to be stalwart, in all this strangeness. Now, with how quickly she seeks to cast him aside, he doubts her. Not enough to give up on her — but to think twice about relying on her. This Shadowheart retreats to the dark once more.
Unsaid: Perhaps as an alternative to selecting the sharpest teeth, in the hopes they’ll bleed you dry.
Instead, a pause. Then, ]
How do you imagine that?
no subject
I'm not free from Shar, even after forsaking her.
The only wound I can't heal is my own. She punishes me through it, still.
I don't feel brave for what I did in the Shadowfell, Gale. I feel like a fool.
no subject
[ he wonders if, after months together here — a lifetime in the other world — and multiple conversations of this kind, she can imagine how he says her name, when she spirals so close to ledge, soft but sure. ]
Did you think the divine would not leave their marks upon us? The gods are possessive and cruel. The faith made in their image.
[ that’s why he worries about this place and the blood price they’ve enacted on each other. their intimacy feeds something here. it changed them from within.
shadowheart deserves better than to be dragged back to the brambles she barely escaped with her life and soul. they all do. ]
You were and are brave. It is only that these things are neither simple nor complete.
no subject
I know. I know it’s not simple.
Perhaps we’ve given ourselves another dormant parasite, with these scars. I already feel the pull of what I’m expected to do here. The rightness of it.
I imagine you do, too.
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And we will find a way to be rid of it, just as we will the tadpole and the Absolute.
[ if she even desires that, at the end of all this. ]
I hope you know you have us through this, however difficult the road may be.
You don't need Her. You never have.
[ something he's trying to tell himself. ]
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You and Astarion both. If it ever seems otherwise—
Everything blurs here. Fractures. It’s harder to hold onto who I am when so many others bleed through.
But I am trying. I promise.