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"Alright, out with it," she snapped impatiently. "You’re dying to tell me something, so say it." |
Gale set his coffee down on the ground, lips pressed together into a thin frown. "You let him kill you." |
"Very astutely observed, Gale. Good job." |
He paused, opened his mouth again, then said, "You allowed him to feed on you to the point of death." |
Familiar irritation bubbled up in her chest. "Are you scandalized or are you lecturing me, because I really need you to pick one." |
"You really have no sense of self preservation, do you?" |
Miriam scoffed and shoved the rest of her toast into her mouth before standing up and brushing crumbs from her trousers. "Why do you care?" she muttered around a mouthful of dry bread. "We’re all living on borrowed time with these bloody parasites, anyway, so I don’t really see how it’s your business." |
He gaped. "That’s it, then? I woke up this morning, noticed a veritable puddle of blood spilling from beneath the walls of your tent, and upon investigating, found you drenched in it and stiffer than a length of lumber, and all you require to resolve the situation upon being brought back to life — with hardly a thank you, I might add — is a bloody lover’s quarrel with the man responsible?" |
Oh, hells, what was it about this man that immediately set her hackles raised at the slightest provocation? "Fine! Thank you! Are you happy?" |
He stood up too and dragged a hand through his hair in frustration. "Is it so awful of me that I didn't want you to suffer a permanent sort of death? I don't understand why you despise me so vehemently! What have I ever done to warrant your constant hostility?" |
"What have you—" Miriam repeated incredulously. "What have you done? You mean aside from the endless jabs at my apparent lack of skill? The patronizing unsolicited advice? The absolutely idiotic way you—" She trailed off, realization dawning on her at her almost slip-up. |
She'd almost revealed where she had seen his face first. And the longer they traveled together, the more she began to suspect he had no idea what had actually transpired in his tower that night. |
But even as the pieces aligned themselves in her mind, he stepped forward into her space with a scowl. "No, do go on," he said angrily, and he was well and truly angry now, cheeks flushing hot, eyes blazing a sort of open aggression she didn't even know he possessed. "The idiotic way I do what, exactly? Sure, you aren't the first person to accuse me of being verbose and presumptuous, but you do at least understand the concept of basic decency, do you not? Gods, but you're starting to make me regret bringing you back. I should have simply left you there!" |
He was too close, barely held back magic searing a crackling sort of heat from his skin that radiated off of him in waves. She could break his neck from here with the right leverage. The slightest shift to the left, with a little momentum, she could probably trip him into the fire. If she leaned forward ever so slightly, her lips could brush that obnoxiously pretty mouth of his— |
Her face flushed at the unwanted thought, but even as she fought her ill-timed desires back below the surface, her consciousness brushed against something foreign and distinctly not her own. And then her awareness expanded with an explosion of sensation. Herself, through his eyes, and with the image, a flood of heated emotions. |
Anger. Indignation. Frustration so palpable she could almost sink her teeth into it. |
Miriam froze. Images played out in her mind, both of her own making and not. Her, grabbing him by the collar, lips to teeth to tongues in a desperate frenzy. He'd taste like the spices he took in his coffee, like sharp and crackling magic in the cozy warmth of a well curated library. And then she was him again, long, dexterous fingers winding tightly into her hair, gently tugging her head back to plant searing kisses down her pulse point. She was trapped, lost in a vortex of want and need and desperate longing amplified on itself until all she could think about was how their bodies would feel pressed together under the stars. |
And then the connection severed, ripped away into an aching emptiness as she was once again alone with her thoughts. |
Miriam shoved him away and stumbled back. "I — that — that wasn't —" she stammered. |
For the first time since their meeting, Gale looked well and truly stunned. "I ... see," he said faintly, pink dusting his cheeks as he self consciously brushed off the front of his robes. |
"You saw nothing," she hissed. Fury flooded her again. How dare he? How dare she? Her life up to this point flashed before her, an endless chain reaction of ill-considered decisions all leading up to this very moment. |
"That ... didn't look like nothing." |
"Well, it was!" she snapped, utterly mortified. "This conversation is over." |
"You can't pin all of it on me, Miriam!" he shouted after her as she stormed off to her tent. "Those were your bloody thoughts too!" |
She ignored him and set about tugging dirt and dried blood from her belongings with her magic. |
What a joke. He was right about one thing: as if she could really call it hers. |
Four more days passed without incident, albeit very awkwardly. Gale remained uncharacteristically tight-lipped whenever she was concerned and seemed to actively go out of his way to avoid being alone with her, or really, near her at all. |
Which was absolutely fine with her. It was just grand, actually. She certainly didn't miss his steady barrage of dry commentary, if anyone were wondering. |
Shadowheart leaned in as they picked their way across a narrow ledge towards what Miriam hoped was a mostly stable ladder down a building that looked almost entirely rotted out. "I think you've broken him," she whispered, nodding her head towards Gale, who was currently inspecting an ancient, weather-worn plaque entirely in silence, without a comment even to himself. |
Miriam wasn't sure why that sent an uncomfortable twinge through her chest. "You're welcome," she muttered. "Thought you enjoyed the silence." |
"Did you hear me complain?" Shadowheart said dryly. "Do I even want to know what's going on between the two of you?" |
Miriam waved a dismissive hand. "Chronic irritation, mostly." |
Shadowheart raised her eyebrows skeptically. "That argument the other day felt a few notches past irritation. Not .. that I mean to pry," she added hastily. "It's just been rather abrupt since everything blew up." |
Miriam kept her eyes glued to the platform ahead of her as she fought down the flush that flooded her cheeks. Blown up it had, alright. The images from that morning had haunted her already elusive sleep every night since, vivid dreams of wanton indulgence, of searing kisses by the fire and wandering hands beneath layers of clothing just begging to be removed. "I like to think we've reached an impasse," she said casually. "Who knows? Maybe we'll be friends now." |
Even as she said it, the thought snagged on a peal of hysterical laughter she only barely choked back down. Friends. As if anyone who'd shared thoughts like that could ever go back to being friends. Of course, that required them to have been friends in the first place, but she pictured the way his face had frozen the moment their tadpoles connected and somehow doubted that particular door could be opened in the opposite direction. |
"If you're sure," Shadowheart said skeptically. "I suppose I should simply thank Lady Shar the two of you have ceased yelling at one another at all hours of the day. Bit of a reprieve, really." |
"Thanks for the support," Miriam muttered. She slowly picked her way down the ladder, wincing with every uneasy creak and groan the rungs made beneath her boots. |
She'd made it a grand total of four steps down when the wood splintered beneath her heels and sent her tumbling backwards into empty air. |
She knew a spell for this. She did, damn it, if only she could remember— |
"Non fit injura!" |
Gale's voice echoed across the ruined town square with a ghostly echo that made her ears ring. The world around her slowed to a crawl as her rapid descent ground to a steady sort of float that left her landing softly on her feet. She blinked and dusted herself off, suddenly incredibly self conscious as she caught Gale looking at her with an expression she couldn’t even begin to read. |
"...thanks," she mumbled finally. |
He looked away first. "Of course." |
She should have known four days without incident was a generous assessment that would sorely tempt fate. She should have felt it in her gut when she climbed into the empty Moonhaven well, as the rope burned her palms and Astarion complained the whole way down about how filthy his fingernails would be. Or even before, when Gale studied the journal he'd swiped alongside that weird Thayan necromancy book and declared he knew where one might find the key. |
Really, she should have expected things to go to shit. |
But gods, did it have to be spiders? |
She dodged another splash of acidic venom and tugged at her magic, sent out bolt after bolt of force that toppled the smaller spiders off of every ledge she could see, but the little fuckers just kept coming with a vengeance that rivaled the entire church of Hoar, and their matriarch still looked as unfazed as ever. |
"A little help, please!" Shadowheart yelled. Miriam could sense the panic through their shared tadpole connection, the way Shadowheart’s skin crawled as it burned with poison only barely numbed by her magic, the way she was backed into a corner as the horde advanced on her. |
Miriam was approaching the limits of her own magic, but she had an idea. Desperate, perhaps, but they were all about to die anyway, weren’t they? |
"Can you blow them away from you?" Miriam yelled back. |
"On it." Astarion leapt onto a ledge and pulled out one of his enchanted arrows. A deafening crack split the air as it landed true and sent every spider surrounding Shadowheart scattering back into the center of the cave. |
Miriam eyed the precarious arrangement of stalactites and loose rock above them as she snatched a smokepowder bomb from her pocket. The bulk of the spiders were clustered right beneath it. |
It was now or never. |
With a grunt, she lobbed the bomb as hard as she could, boosted by the last of her magic reserves as it soared into the air. |
Gale gasped in horror as he noticed what she’d done and scrambled back into the shadows. "Miriam, what are you doing?" |
She didn’t have time to answer. The bomb detonated just close enough to the cluster of rocks to cause the entire section of ceiling to crumble into a massive hail of boulders and debris. |
"Gods damn you, Miri!" Astarion coughed, and then it was the last Miriam saw of him as the thundering storm of earth plunged them into stifling darkness. |
For a moment, the air was thick with choking dust. A sudden gust of air washed across her, followed by a magical bundle of light that winked on with a slight pop, and then Gale was yanking her to her feet by the hand with an incredulous expression. "What on earth were you thinking?" he screeched. |
Miriam’s ears popped as her tadpole connected with Astarion’s, his thoughts filled with an almost hysterical cackle underpinning his rapidly growing anxiety. Light appeared in Shadowheart’s hand as Miriam watched through Astarion’s gaze. |
"Well," Shadowheart coughed weakly. "We’re alive, at least. Are Miriam and Gale still in one piece?" |
Miriam sent back her own image: the wreckage before her, her own sense of well-being, and Gale gesticulating wildly in front of her saying something she couldn’t quite make out through the ringing in her ears, and then the connection severed. |
"Miriam! Are you listening? Are they alive?" |
Miriam flapped her hand at him in rapidly bubbling annoyance. "Yes, they’re fine," she gritted out. "I timed it so we would be out of the way." |
"Timed it? Are you serious? Any more of a collapse and we would have been buried alongside those blasted spiders! What have you done?" |
Miriam was only half-listening as she spied a glimmer of purple at the base of the debris pile. She squatted despite her aching muscles and a particularly pained section of her thigh and curiously fished it out from the dirt. It radiated with magic, with the sickeningly foul cloying scent of necromancy, and looked approximately the same size and shape as the indentation in Gale’s tome. |
"Found your stupid key, apparently. Are you happy?" |
Gale gaped at her. "Well, considering you and I are trapped underground and quite possibly at risk for suffocating on chokedamp any minute now, no! Not even remotely!" |
Miriam shot him a sour glance. "Please. This tunnel system is enormous. One of them is bound to lead up to the surface. Or open up to the Underdark at the very least." |
He gestured wildly at her. "How is that better?" |
"We won’t suffocate on chokedamp in the open air?" Miriam shrugged. "What does it matter? You have your trinket, we’ll find our way out, and then you can read the damn thing to your heart’s content." |
"Cheery. I didn’t take you for such an optimist," Gale said bitterly. |
Something crawled up her leg. With a yelp, she drew her dagger and slashed something meaty in half, and then felt her stomach lurch as a spider the size of a sunmelon twitched in pieces in the dirt. "Gross," she muttered. |
Gale only let out an irritated sigh. "Well. How badly injured are you?" |
Gods, her thigh ached, but she certainly wasn’t about to give Gale the satisfaction. "I’m fine," she gritted out. "Let’s get moving." |
They made camp in a long abandoned alcove filled with rotting bookshelves, a desk that had seen better days, and a decrepit, bloodstained shrine to Lolth in the corner. Miriam stoked the fire idly and sipped at a potion as the pot perched on the coals bubbled merrily and filled the space with the comforting scent of onions, potatoes, and spiced rehydrated meat. Her adrenaline had finally worn down enough for her to feel everything else it had held at bay: her fear, her anxiety, and worst of all, the blinding pain in her thigh that only seemed to worsen by the minute. |
The potion was the last she had in her pack, but it seemed to be dulling the worst of it at least, so she tried to put everything else from her mind and rolled the liquid around in her mouth as she poked at the coals. |
Even here, thoughts of Cassian haunted her as she entertained a childhood memory of the way he’d made a face upon finding out she actually enjoyed the bitter, herbal taste of healing potions. Most people, she’d discovered, found them vile, but she had always found the bite on her tongue to be far more invigorating than it was disgusting. |
From the look on Gale’s face as he watched her savor the bottle, she was beginning to gather he was not of a similar mind. |
"Please tell me you’ve poured wine into that bottle." |
Miriam snorted. "Why would I ruin the taste of a perfectly good potion?" |
He made a face. "Every day you somehow become more puzzling," he muttered. He settled back on his side of the fire and turned his attention back to the book he was reading. "I apologize," he said abruptly. |
She choked. "Pardon?" |
"For underestimating you. We could have perished, but we did not, and you may very well have preserved all of us to live another day." |
Miriam raised her eyebrows and squinted at him suspiciously. "Are you feeling alright, or did I just hear you admit you were wrong about something?" |
His lips curled into a smile she hadn't seen in days. "Stranger things have happened today." |
Somehow, after that, they settled into an oddly comfortable silence: him absorbed in his book while his soup simmered, her dancing little motes of fire across her knuckles with an ease that still caught her off guard. |
"What happened to you?" Gale asked softly after their bowls had been cleared and the fire dulled to glittering embers. "With your magic?" |
Miriam's first instinct was to bristle again, but the expression on Gale's face was soft, curious instead of presumptive. "What, aside from the fact that I can actually do it now?" she said dryly. |
"You move like someone who's been classically trained, but you don't strike me as particularly interested in the pursuit of it. Why pursue a warlock’s bargain, if not to further your craft?" |
Something pulled at her chest. She should be angry at this line of questioning. She should blame him still, the way her ire had been directed all this time, but the only thing that settled over her was an exhausted sort of sadness. "I made a mistake," she said quietly. "Fixing it came at a price." |
A dark expression flickered across his face. "I know something of that myself." |
"I killed my brother with it," she blurted out, and it was only until she took in the ringing silence that followed that she realized it was the first time she'd made that admission out loud. She expected Gale to say something, but he only nodded at her to continue, and before she could stop herself, everything came tumbling out. Her childhood in the shadow of her family. Years of tutors all declaring her a talentless disgrace. Cassian's love for her, for the way he looked out for her despite how much it cost him sometimes. The way time had slowed on the nautiloid, how one moment she'd been trapped in the grip of what had once been her brother; and the next, her body had simply not been her own. |
She sighed bitterly. "Even if his remains would have survived the crash intact, there wasn't anything left of him to salvage. I don't remember much of what happened after the shadows took me, but Shadowheart filled in the gaps afterward. It was ..." Bile kissed the back of her throat as she trailed off. "I wish I knew how to feel about it. But I don't." |
Sure, she'd left out the entire bit about exactly where she'd stumbled on her ill-gotten abilities, but even so, finally telling the story to someone all at once lifted a stone from her shoulders she hadn't even realized was there in the first place. "Well," she said abruptly, suddenly incredibly self conscious. "There you have it. You suddenly know more about me than anyone else we travel with. Don't ... don't abuse it. Please." |
Gods she hated the way her voice dropped to a barely audible whisper at the end of those words. It wasn't like her, laying bare so much of her wounds in front of ... well, anyone but Cassian, really. But Cassian wasn't here anymore, and somehow she had lanced that wound in front of the last person she'd ever have expected to take the time to listen. |
"I would never," he said. He swallowed, choked on the words as something unreadable passed through his eyes. "I am truly sorry for your loss, Miriam. Words cannot express adequate condolences for such a thing." |
"I don't need your pity," she whispered. She wanted to kick herself the moment she said it. How much of an arsehole was she, really? |
"I don't pity you." When she looked back up at him, he wasn't looking at her anymore, his gaze fixed squarely on the fire. The light danced on his cheekbones, softening his features even as it illuminated the mark of the Orb spidering down from his eye and into the folds of his robes. "I told you of Mystra. Of my own folly. We are all capable of terrible, terrible mistakes. What happened with your brother ... you've seen the destruction wrought by the Absolute and its followers. And still, you would have given yourself over to the end to save a body beyond redemption." |
Gods, she was not going to cry in front of this man. "More’s the pity I didn't," she muttered. "But thank you," she added hastily before he could comment further. "For your kindness. Gods know I don't deserve it after the way I've treated you." |
Gale offered a wan smile. "In your defense, you are not the first person to direct your ire at my ... what did one of my colleagues call it? "Insufferably overinflated ego’? I'm afraid a year of isolation has only made me poorer company." |
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