Split (1)

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"I don't actually hate you, you know," Miriam admitted. She offered a teasing smile. "It's not entirely your fault you remind me of everyone who's ever called me a failure."
"You're the furthest thing from a failure." The way he looked at her sent a shiver down her spine with its intensity. "I know what I’ve said to you before, Miriam, but the truth is you have so much raw power at your fingertips. I can feel it, when you cast. The Weave trembles when you call on it."
Miriam laughed uneasily. "I doubt that," she said. "It doesn't exactly respond like it."
"It's because you hold yourself back. Look —" He leapt to his feet, then froze, as if he were remembering himself. "If ... you will allow me?"
Any other day and Miriam would have shut him down instantly. She wasn't sure why she didn't this time. Maybe it was the way their conversation had left her feeling oddly stripped bare. Or maybe it was the way he looked at her, devoid of judgment for once and full of something that looked suspiciously like anticipation. Like hope.
Her mouth went dry as she climbed to her feet, heart pounding as he made his way hesitantly around the fire. There was a tense silence between the two of them, as though they both feared the smallest sound would break this fragile truce they'd found. She felt as though she were standing on a ledge before a great, yawning precipice.
"Show me," she whispered.
He stepped behind her and gestured to the far wall. "Aim a stream of ice — there. No, as you normally would — step your feet apart and..."
He guided her arms into position, the motions both foreign and familiar at the same time. This close, without the distraction of enough anger to topple a mountain, she could feel the hum of magic in his clothes as he pressed against her back, feel the way it lifted from his skin and dissipated into the air. "Close your eyes," he whispered. "Trust me. Please."
And she did. With darkness clouding her vision, the currents of magic running through her veins amplified in her ears from the tiniest buzz to a rushing stream of energy that itched at the tips of her fingers.
"Breathe," Gale murmured behind her. "Just feel it for a moment."
Miriam inhaled deeply, steeped herself in the electric tingle of magic, in the warmth of candles and old books and pressed flowers that radiated from his clothes. The world seemed to crawl to a standstill.
And then she felt it: the tiniest rush from her fingertips as the magic burst forth, not all at once in a storm of chaos as it normally did, but in a neat, controlled line, tethered to her awareness from where it began at her hands all the way to where it brushed against the rocks before her. "That’s it," Gale said, and she could feel the warmth of his breath on her ear as he slowly pulled his hands away from hers. "Don’t fight it. Let go."
The shaky control she’d struggled with since drawing from her newfound pool of magic fought her as she stepped out of his shadow, but Gale placed a steadying hand on her shoulder. "Let it go," he repeated.
So she did. She focused on her breathing, on the warmth of his hand, on the chill radiating from her palms. She focused, and then released.
A rush washed over her, a softness, a feeling of comfort and beauty and all of the things she’d never before associated with her magic. Her eyes flew open. Ice spun from her fingertips like snowflakes and settled across the wall like early morning frost on a windowpane; not in a single blast as she normally expected, but spiraling outward from the center in delicately constructed fractals.
For the first time, she’d drawn elegance from her own chaos. Giddy excitement flooded her at the realization. "I did that," she said. "My magic ... did that!" She spun around and promptly stumbled from the ache in her leg that was beginning to return with a vengeance, but before she could right herself, Gale’s arms were under her shoulders, catching her, holding her upright, and the look on his face stole the air from her lungs. Their thoughts meshed together — not the sharp, icy cold connection of their tadpoles this time, but the gentle, flowing warmth of the Weave — and then he kissed her.
It was a strange thing, sharing his thoughts this way. It was strange to be surprised by a kiss while expecting it, to foresee an event that still caught her off guard the moment his lips brushed hers. Her desires flared like an enspelled candle, the intensity of them caught and amplified by his own.
Gale froze. The connection slammed shut as he stepped back in alarm. "I — apologies," he stammered. "I didn't mean—"
Fuck it. Maybe it was the delirium of exhaustion catching up to her. Maybe their recent brush with death had adjusted her opinions on some things. Or maybe the high of magic gone right for once had loosened her grip on her already poor impulse control. Caution and sense be damned, Miriam leaned forward, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him again.
It was clumsy, as far as kisses went, and awkward to start with the way it took Gale a few more seconds to process what was happening. But then, with a soft sound slipping from his throat, he melted into her touch. Fantasies were made real as his thumb traced the shell of her ear, as his lower lip found a soft and gentle home between her teeth. Miriam drank him in, lost in his taste, his scent, his touch. In the little noises he made when she teased at his tongue, in the way his grip slid down her body until his hands clung to the small of her back and pulled her close.
And then her ears began to ring, her vision blurring as something overwhelming hummed to life in his chest.
Gale stepped back again and cleared his throat, cheeks flushed. "I, er. An abundance of excitement can sometimes upset the stability of my ... condition. As much as I thoroughly enjoyed your attentions," he added hastily with an emphatic wave of his hands. "Best to perhaps ... hold off on any, erm, further stimulation—" His blush only deepened when he registered what he’d just said, and despite her best efforts, Miriam couldn’t hold back her laughter.
It was a strange thing, to laugh without restraint for once. To laugh without the walls she normally held in place, to be unreserved with a rare moment of joy instead of clenching her fists around it to carry it with her forever instead. And when he flinched at the sound, she reached for his hand without hesitation and threaded her fingers through his with a reassuring squeeze.
Gods, but this moment. She was drunk on it, more dizzy with it than from any sort of wine or spirits. "One day," she said before she could stop herself, more emphatic than she was willing to admit. "We’ll be able to revisit this."
He laughed softly at that. "Your determination has begun to renew my own, I must admit." He pulled away, hand lingering hesitantly in her grip. "Perhaps we should turn in for a little while. Clear our, erm. Heads."
The smile tugging at her lips almost hurt her cheeks with the unfamiliarity of it. "Good night, Gale," she said softly.
He returned it with a crinkle in his eyes that set her chest alight all over again. "Good night, Miriam."
When Miriam opened her eyes again, the entire world felt the wrong size. The pain she’d been ignoring on her leg had grown to a magnitude that was wholly impossible to set aside, and the rest of her wasn’t exactly faring much better. It was as though her bones themselves had grown claws to fight their way out of her skin. Even moving her head was utter agony, and gods, had it been this bloody cold in here when she’d first gone to sleep?
"Gale?" she croaked. She swore she’d had the strangest dream about him. She fought gravity tooth and nail to force herself upright as she squinted around her surroundings, still so dark save for the flickering glow of candles and conjured light dancing about their heads. "Shit," she groaned, staring blankly into the last of the dying embers. "I’m not — not feeling so great."
She couldn’t focus her vision enough to find where Gale had slipped off to; only that there was a blur of motion off to the side of the fire and a shuffle of cloth, a clink of a bottle.
Fuck. What if that weren’t Gale? Visions of the nautiloid flashed through her head, of waking up in a strange place reeking of dead flesh headed for certain destruction. A sudden bolt of anxiety shot through her. "Gale?" she repeated. Fear gripped her like a vice as she reached for the nearest solid surface and made a truly poor attempt to haul herself to her feet.
His voice reached her ear, distorted and strange, but she couldn’t comprehend what he was saying. Her world upended, and she had the distant feeling of plummeting through empty space before cool hands caught her with a grunt.
And then all she knew was pain, wrenching and raw. The room ran red with it.
Maybe she was screaming. She truly couldn’t tell.
"Miri, wake up! We’re going to be late!"
Miriam yawned. Her bed was warm, buried as she was beneath a lovingly worn comforter that had always carried a faint scent of raspberry and rose ever since she accidentally broke her favorite perfume bottle on top of it. A single slat of sunlight beamed in through the unshuttered window and settled comfortably across her legs.
Gods she was so sleepy.
Footsteps, and then a small hand yanking at her wrist before the covers were unceremoniously ripped from her body. "Come on, Miri, you promised you would take me today!"
Eleanor. Miriam blinked.
What a strange dream she’d had.
She squinted at the clock above her mantle and faked an exaggerated scowl. "Oh no!" she lamented loudly with a dramatic sigh. "I think we’ve missed our appointment!"
"Miriam!" Eleanor screeched. "That clock says we have exactly fifty-six minutes to be present at Ramazith’s Tower, and you know Master Lorroakan doesn’t suffer tardiness!"
"Gods, you have an absurd vocabulary for seven years old," Miriam muttered with a snort. Eleanor stood at the foot of the bed, looking all the more precocious in her freshly pressed robes with the way her hands rested on her hips, disapproving frown pasted on her face. "Have you considered a career as a librarian instead?" Miriam said with a crooked grin as she threw on a pair of reasonably clean trousers and dug through the armoire for a shirt that didn’t have a hole in it somewhere.
"Father says I am articulate and well spoken," Eleanor declared proudly.
"Yes, yes, Miss Articulate and Well Spoken, get your arse in the vanity chair so we can get your countenance to match, shall we?"
Eleanor hopped into the chair and swung her legs against the vanity. "Last week he showed me how to summon a mephit! He said I probably couldn't do it, but I did it anyway. It was rather adorable, if a bit rude."
Miriam picked up a sprayer of water and a wide-toothed comb and got to work. She and Cassian had their father's coarse waves, but Eleanor — spitting image of their mother that she was — had inherited those same tight, springy curls. She parted Eleanor's hair down the middle and began separating it into neat sections with oil, a comb, and practiced fingers. "Well, what did you say to it when it arrived?"
Eleanor pouted. "I only waved and said, "Hello! My name is Eleanor Alia Taveric, and I am your new mistress!’ It stuck out its tongue at me."
"Maybe it didn't want to be commanded." Miriam said dryly. "Some people bristle at that, you know."
"Yes, but I summoned it!" Eleanor protested. "Master Lorroakan says I didn't have the aptitude to control it properly, but I did everything just as he said!"
"Yes, well." Miriam scowled. "Lorroakan can be a bit of an arsehole sometimes, trust me."
Eleanor was quiet for a moment. "He knows a lot of things," she said finally. "He has so many books! I asked to borrow a copy of Glass to Gold: A Modern Transmutation Treatise, but he said no."
Miriam began twisting each section into neat double strands with small dollops of sweetly scented cream, securing them in place at the ends with clasps of elegant gold filigree as Eleanor fidgeted in silence. "There," she said finally, gesturing to the mirror with a grin. "Regal. You look a fine mistress of the arcane arts. And with ten minutes to spare!" She held out a hand to help Eleanor hop down from her perch. "Cassian will open a portal for us downstairs. Come on."
Where Eleanor grasped her hand, her fingers began to tingle. Odd. Miriam frowned as the sensation spiraled through her wrist and into her shoulder, until something wrenched itself into her chest. "Ellie, what are you—" she groaned, but when she looked back up, Eleanor was gone, and in her place was the twisted, grotesque form of the creature that had once been Cassian. She looked around, and her room was gone. They were surrounded, not by flesh, but by darkness. Her chest was bare save for a single red thread piercing the center of it, and something was pulling, pulling, pulling something out, unraveling her unpleasantly like a worn-out sweater with a loosening sleeve.
"Miriam." Cassian’s voice echoed in her mind as the mind flayer tightened its grip around her wrist until its claws pierced her skin. "Can you hear me?"
"Stop it," she choked out as she tried to flail out of its grip. "Stop it, you’re wearing his voice but you’re not him, you’re not—"
"Miriam!" Someone was holding her down by the shoulders. "Miriam, listen to me, it’s very important that you open your eyes."
The ache flooded back into her body all at once, a deep, penetrating sort of agony that rattled her ribs with every breath. She forced her eyes open and squinted as her vision finally began to focus, and crouched over her was ... Gale?
"There we are." His voice was gentle despite the way his features creased with worry. "I’m going to lift your head. You must drink this."
His palm found the back of her head as he softly guided her upright enough to drink without choking, and he held up a streaked metal cup to her lips. "I know my fair share of alchemy, but I am afraid our supplies here are sadly limited," he said with a grimace. "This might very well be the worst brew you’ve ever had, even by your own abysmal standards, but it should slow the poison and buy us some time."
"Poison?" she croaked.
"Drink," he urged her. "I’m getting there."
She did as he asked and immediately sputtered in alarm. The taste of whatever that cup held was, in fact, truly wretched. It was slimy against her lips and turned her stomach with the reek of mold and rotting vegetation.
"Trust me," Gale said firmly. "Please."
A tiny echo of a memory tugged at her mind. He’d said those words to her before; she was sure of it. And she ... had, hadn’t she? Her stomach lurched as she forced herself to swallow it, to push past the stench and the appalling texture and shove the rest of it down. It churned in her stomach and left a foul aftertaste in the back of her mouth. "Fuck," she spat weakly.
Another cup was immediately at her lips, filled with cool water that tasted faintly of cucumber. She idly wondered where he’d acquired that, and decided it best she didn’t ask questions.
"Why didn’t you say anything about that spider bite?" he asked finally as he gently laid her head back down after she’d drained the second cup.
"On your leg. There’s a nasty one on your thigh, infected as a bog. You’re lucky to have lasted the night and that you were still breathing when I awoke."
Ah. Shit. That explained the pain she’d been ignoring in her leg. "Felt like just a scratch at the time," she mumbled.
It was a poor lie, and from the look on Gale’s face it was apparent that he thought so too. "You were limping after the ceiling came down," he said with a frown. "I thought — I don’t know, I should have noticed it earlier, but hells, why didn’t you speak up? What were you thinking?"
She was really sick of people asking her that question, but the draught he had her drink was making everything feel warm and disorienting. "I wasn’t," she mumbled, a cheeky grin finding its way onto her face. "S’what I’m best at."
He made a face and dabbed at her forehead with something soft and cool, and she found herself leaning into his touch like a cat despite the way she knew it had to look utterly humiliating. "You’re wrong about that," he said softly, barely a whisper under his breath, so quiet she wondered if it was even meant for her ears. Gentle fingers brushed sweat plastered strands of hair from her forehead. "Sleep," he murmured. "You’ll need your strength to fight off the rest of the poison."
"You’ve got to stop saving my life," she mumbled sleepily even as she spent the last of her energy angling her head into his lap. "Getting ... really tired of owing you things."
"Wake up in a few hours and we may call it even, then."
When Miriam opened her eyes again, only a single candle burned on the rotted out desk, though something behind her seemed to be glowing and unearthly sort of silvery blue—
"Hello! I am here on behalf of Gale of Waterdeep!"
"Oh, you have got to be shitting me," Miriam muttered sourly. Her makeshift bedroll stank of sweat and sick as she kicked the wool blanket off of her and struggled into a seated position.
"No! I am certainly not!" the projection said cheerily. "He has tasked me with standing guard over you while he is away, and to alert him of anything should the need arise."
"Alert—" she said faintly. Clammy panic from a past life prickled awake in her stomach. "He ah, can't ... see everything you guys see ... can he?"
"Not unless he has layered in an additional spell. Today's duties of mine, however, are of the utmost importance."
"Right. And where has he gone?"
It beamed at her. "To salvage materials for a sending spell, of course, and possibly find a path to the surface."
Miriam frowned, the panic from earlier bubbling into a different sort of worry. "He went out there alone?"
"Yes. He is currently on his way back."
Miriam sniffed her shirt and felt her stomach lurch. "Well, look away please," she said finally.
Polite thing, for a bloody projection. Begrudgingly, she had to admit, when they were working properly, they were sort of cute. She peeked out of the corner of her eye to make sure he — it — was facing a different direction, then yanked her shirt off and got to work magicking it back to life. Not that any amount of poorly weaved cantrips would substitute for a hot bath, and gods would she kill for one now, but if she had to suffer the smell of whatever was in that potion splashed on her collar for even a second more, she was going to commit violent murder.
The fabric was a practical sort of brown linen — but with the dirt it had collected by now it was closer to a smudgy soot black. And it was damp, clammy as a plague victim’s arsehole with what had to have been her body weight in sweat. She pondered her options, then decided if she were undressing she may as well go all the way.
She stopped in her tracks when she made to shimmy out of her trousers. The left side of them had been neatly cut away, leaving her leg bare and visible. And gods, what a mess it was. The wound site itself was wrapped tightly in clean white linen, but even in the dim lighting she could see the way the skin around it remained puffy and red, with angry dark lines branching upward towards her pelvis and downward towards her kneecap. The pain had lessened, at least, from the skull splitting agony of earlier to a dull, pounding ache that seemed to pulse with every heartbeat.
Well. Suppose she was leaving all of that alone, then.
Working in sections, she managed to get herself relatively clean, and had just managed to wring her shirt free of the last of the dirt when rapid footsteps sounded from around the corner. With a squeak she threw her shirt back on, fumbling with the laces of her collar, and had just managed tying it together when a rather disheveled Gale walked in carrying a tattered satchel that clinked faintly with every step.
"You’re awake!" He set the satchel down and hurried to her side. Warm light winked to life in his hand as he studied her face and turned his attention to her leg. "I may have discovered a route out of here. I don’t think you’re ready to walk yet, but I found a length of copper jewelry on one of those skeletons out there, it’s not quite wire, but with some creative applications of heat and force I can fashion something that will carry a message to the others, and if my suspicions hold water about that bricked up wall I found, perhaps Shadowheart can meet us here and patch you up completely—"
"Gale," she interrupted. She tapped at his hand, which bore a shallow scratch down the back of it. Three of his knuckles were raw and bloodied. "What happened?"
He smiled sheepishly. "I, ah, am not the most adept, shall we say, at prying crates open with my bare hands. An unwise choice, admittedly, as all they contained were maggots, mold, and what looked suspiciously like it could have once been something that resembled a cluster of bananas." His lighthearted demeanor belied his worry, but she could see it anyway in the way his jaw clenched, the way his hands shook when they sought out hers and squeezed. Whether it was to reassure her or reassure himself, she couldn’t quite tell.
Even a day ago, she would have yanked her hands away in offense, but she only squeezed back and took in the way his eyes finally began to match the quirk of his lips. "I feel fine," she said firmly. "Thanks to you. I’m alright."
"Right, and I am expected to simply trust that self assessment now, I presume."
She swatted at him with a snicker. "Just shut up and bask in the praise, arsehole."
Miriam drifted in and out of sleep after that, blessedly dreamless this time, lulled back into slumber by the soft mutter of Gale's incantations from across the room. When did the crackling aura of his magic stop making her skin crawl? Faint memories of the kiss floated through her head, blurred by the fog of exhaustion but no less warm. Maybe at some point he squeezed her hand again. Maybe at some point it began to feel right.
The first thing Miriam did upon their return to camp was make a beeline for the river to properly wash every hair on her head. Shadowheart had radiated disapproval upon purging her body of the rest of the spider venom and subsequent infection, a disapproval that likely translated into the signature of her magic the way it wriggled its way through Miriam's veins like thousands of tiny bugs feasting beneath her skin.
"Can't believe you almost died down there," she'd muttered as she rinsed her hands with conjured water, cool and clear as a mountain spring. "Next time, speak up! That potion he gave you saved your life, but if you'd have taken it before the infection spread, you'd likely never have gotten as sick as you did."

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