[ 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.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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.
no subject
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. ]
no subject
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.