Chapter Text
A songbird perches on the branch of a yew tree, her silver feathers shining in the moonlight. The branch is heavy with blood-red berries, lethal to anything foolish enough to eat them. As Tav watches, the bird opens her beak to sing. She has no tongue, but he can still hear her song.
Tav wakes in his tent, alone and with damp cheeks. This was a mild nightmare compared to what he gets most nights. Still, it left him shaken.
Faint, pale sunlight filters in through the canvas walls of his tent. There’s no point in trying to get back to sleep. Instead, Tav tries to calm his nerves. It’s not that he wants to hide his distress from his friends. By now, they’re all well aware of Tav’s frequent night terrors. When you’re sleeping in a campsite like this, there isn’t much in the way of privacy.
It’s just that there’s no time to slow down.
The nautiloid crash was more than a tenday ago now… but they’re no closer to finding a way to rid themselves of the larvae left in their heads by their illithid captors. Everything they’ve learned about the worms suggest that they kill their hosts within days of implantation, transforming them into adult mind flayers to complete their parasitic reproductive cycle. The fact that Tav and his companions still alive is a blessing. It’s also a mystery, and one with fatal consequences if they fail to solve it.
Tav’s friends are counting on him, enough that they kept him in their circle even after seeing the horror he created in their camp three nights ago. Though Tav knows he doesn’t deserve their trust, he refuses to fail them now that they’ve given it. Today, that means pushing forward even when his body is screaming at him to lie face down on his bedroll and never move again.
He dresses himself. Ties his hair back out of the way. Splashes water on his face from his waterskin, hoping to wake himself up. Maybe reduce some of the redness in his one normal eye, too—both of them ache with exhaustion, but the left one has a sclera that’s dark enough that it never looks bloodshot.
Once Tav is as presentable as he can be, he sits still for a moment. Breathes. Counts each inhale and exhale until he’s confident that he can fake a level of calm he’s never truly been able to feel. After that, all he needs is a smile and he’s ready to face whatever nightmare awaits them next.
In the days following the murder, Quil Grootslang is never far from Tav’s thoughts. Every time he emerges from his tent in the morning, he looks on reflex toward the spot by the water where he found the bard’s body. She’s never really there, but still. He can’t help himself but check.
When Tav sits with his friends around the fire in the evenings, he can’t help but remember how they helped him bury Quil out in the woods. They gave her as much dignity as they could—and Tav, too. He’s grateful to them beyond words… and ashamed of his continuing failure to explain to them just how much of a risk he is to their continued safety.
They just can’t seem to believe that he could be at fault for such an awful deed. Instead, they’ve decided that Tav’s tadpole must be to blame. That it killed her, somehow, and erased Tav’s memory of being witness to such wickedness. It would be a convenient explanation, if not for the fact that the wretched little parasite in Tav’s skull had never slept so peacefully as it did that night.
Although he has no memories of killing Quil, Tav knows in his heart that he is responsible. The Urge did this, this thing he carries with him like a second shadow. Tav doesn’t know what kind of creature it might be, or if it even is a creature. There’s every chance that it is a curse, or some kind of sickness of the soul. Regardless of how he thinks about it, though, the Urge is Tav’s burden, and he is the only one at fault when he isn’t strong enough to keep it in check.
For the first few days after the crash, the Urge did little more than to whisper vile suggestions in Tav’s mind. Occasionally, it would try to move his hands, but Tav always managed to keep control of himself. That changed the night a lost dragonborn bard took shelter in their camp. While Tav slept on, unaware, the Urge took over his body and used his hands to take Quil’s life.
While Tav’s mind retained nothing of what happened, his body remembers what he did, and it won’t let him forget. That morning, his arm had ached with the strain of stabbing her again and again, long after she was dead… and he’d tasted blood in his mouth, too. He hopes that doesn’t mean that he ate some piece of Quil’s body, but he wouldn’t put anything past the Urge.
Often, Tav replays the moment he found her body. Her silver scales were shining in the light of early dawn. The cuts to her abdomen were deep. Gods, there had been so much blood. Tav still has a lot of questions about how it happened. They never found the weapon, so did he throw it into the water? How did he keep from waking up his other friends? Had Quil been afraid as she died? Did he kill her quickly, or did she suffer? How great was her agony? What did she look like as she squirmed under his knife, terrified and pinned and bleeding—
Breathe. Breathe. Tav tastes bile on the back of his tongue, and he chooses to take it as a bitter reminder that his body can still react with disgust to this kind of perverse curiosity. Takes it as proof that he is the one who owns this body, not the Urge… even if Tav’s idle thoughts sometimes drift too close to the kind of things the Urge might say.
… Or maybe that really had been the Urge, whispering so quietly he mistook it for his own thoughts. After all, when it speaks, it uses Tav’s own voice.
Whatever the source, he rejects it.
Tav cannot afford to allow room in his head for that kind of uncertainty. He cannot allow himself to ever confuse what the Urge says to him with the workings of his own mind. If he doesn’t draw a line between the two and hold it fast, he risks allowing himself to fall into patterns that the Urge has taught him. Risks starting to think as it would think, even when it is quiet.
After the most difficult days, when Tav closes his eyes to sleep, he prays with shaking hands that he will remain himself until morning. Prays that none of his companions will pay the price for their misplaced trust. Who he is praying to, Tav couldn’t say, but what else could he do when faced with something like this? He prays, and hopes that one of the gods will take pity on a wretched thing like him.
Fragments of love songs weave throughout his dreams, the ghost of Quil’s voice haunting Tav’s guilty mind. These dreams steal his sleep and leave him sweating and trembling by morning… and yet, he’s grateful for them. Terrible as they are, Tav at least knows that they are his own thoughts. They aren’t real, they’re nothing more than scenes concocted by his own imagination. More than that, they belong to Tav himself, not to whoever he was in his past life and not to the Urge.
Tav can’t say the same thing with any certainty about his other nightmares. Many of those seem to be far more real. Some are visions of blood and bone that feel like omens of something yet to come. Others are flickering memories left over by this body’s previous occupant, glimpses of horrors that Tav is forced to watch without being allowed to control or change a thing.
He can never make much sense of anything he sees in those dreams. What they do tell him, though, is that the person Tav used to be in his past life, the person he used to be before he woke up aboard the nautiloid with his memories destroyed… they must have been a monster. There can be no other explanation as to why something as evil as this godsforsaken Urge would have chosen to possess this body. It guided these hands and their deeds in Tav’s past life, of that he is certain, and it will take back control of him if he lets it.
That’s why Tav is taking precautions—starting with the arrangement he has with Astarion.
As a vampire spawn, Astarion needs to consume blood. It doesn’t have to be humanoid, and he mostly sustains himself on what beasts he can hunt in the forest. However, the blood of thinking creatures tastes far better to him, and even a small amount of it leaves him feeling stronger and faster than usual. As the host to the Urge, Tav needs to keep himself from slaughtering anyone else in his sleep. Being drained of blood leaves him feeling weak, dizzy, and sluggish in both mind and body.
It’s a perfect fit, really. Sustenance in exchange for safety. Each of them has what the other one needs, and they’re both willing to trade. Tav can’t help but marvel at the symmetry of it. Their arrangement is straightforward in a way that precious little else is, especially compared to the chaos they must weather elsewhere in their daily lives. But this? Some days, this is the only thing that feels like it makes sense.
Astarion is surprisingly considerate about the whole thing. He makes Tav ask for the bite every time, makes him grant his permission in words, which is appreciated… if completely unnecessary. Tav asks Astarion back to his tent every single night, hoping that if the Urge takes control before he wakes, it will have a harder time taking anyone’s life. Or doing it undetected, anyway.
It also helps Tav fall sleep. He doesn’t always stay asleep, of course. His head is too full of guilt and rotten memories for that. Still, the sort of drifting feeling that follows a feeding tends to buy him at least a few peaceful hours he wouldn’t ordinarily get. For this mercy, Tav is grateful to Astarion for more than he can ever say.
And if the bite also happens to come with the benefit of a few minutes of friendly touch from a man who captures Tav’s interest like no other… well, Tav is too selfish not to savor that, too. Even if the touch is a matter of necessity and nothing more. He’s mostly just glad that Astarion is willing to touch him at all at this point. Astarion was the first one to find Tav beside the bard’s body. It would be understandable if he decided to keep his distance from now on. Instead, he seems as much at ease with Tav as he is with anyone else at camp. That isn’t a very high bar, of course, but Tav is still grateful. The last thing he wants is to see fear in Astarion’s eyes because of him.
It’s early enough when Tav leaves his tent that Astarion is the only person up and around. He took the last watch in the rotation the night before, if Tav remembers correctly. Even times when that isn’t the case, however, Astarion is usually still the first to rise the next morning.
By now, the fire has died down to ash. Astarion is still sitting beside it, though, his face turned toward the east. There’s a little bit of the rosy dawn clinging to every one of his silver-white curls… and to the tips of his pointed ears. Fatigued as he is, Tav can’t help but smile when he sees that. After all of those years Astarion spent having to hide from the sun, it seems as though he is now savoring every second of it that he can get.
When he hears Tav approaching, Astarion looks back over his shoulder.
“Good morning,” he says. “You’re up early.”
There’s a second part of that greeting that hangs unspoken—“Trouble sleeping?” By this point, it’s more or less implied. The day Tav doesn’t have any trouble sleeping, he’ll probably throw himself a party. A party with quiet music and chamomile tea, perhaps, but a party nevertheless.
“So are you,” Tav answers. “Good morning.”
“There, now. We’ve both said it, so it must be true.” Astarion’s eyes return to the sky. “I look forward to the pleasant, monster-and-mayhem-free day we have ahead of us.”
The mornings after Astarion feeds, he always looks… comfortable in himself. Relaxed. This morning, there’s also a warm cast to his face that belies his undead pallor. A gift from the pink sky at dawn. Someone who didn’t know better might think he was still alive.
Tav, by contrast, is barely functional. In addition to his restless night, there are certain consequences to inviting a vampire spawn back to one’s bedroll. Mild dizziness, a bit of brain fog, nothing catastrophic—but even still, they’re consequences he’ll just have to live with until Shadowheart is awake and he can beg a healing spell off of her.
He drifts towards the center of camp and sets about rebuilding the fire. His motions are practiced but thoughtless. Tav could probably do this in his sleep, and he’s making a valiant effort to do so at the present moment. Soon, there’s a low fire crackling that will be serviceable for cooking breakfast… and for boiling water.
Yes, that’s a good idea. Tea will calm his nerves. Tav hangs a pot from the hook on the spit and drops himself down onto the other end of the log Astarion is using as a seat. All that’s left now is to wait. He has actual tea now that they’ve bartered from the druids at the Grove, fragrant and green, but he’ll probably still add in some of the herbs he’s gathered, too. Not valerian. It makes him groggy, and he does need to stay alert today. Maybe some rose hips, though. Lavender, definitely. And…
A flash of metal in his peripheral vision catches his eye. Tav looks up to see Astarion tugging at a needle and thread, sewing something on the sleeve of the ruffled shirt he’s wearing. Tired as he is, Tav can’t help but watch the man work for a moment. Astarion just looks so focused while he places each stitch, and his hands move with a kind of ease that can only come from quite a lot of practice.
“Can I help you?” Astarion asks him a moment later. He sounds amused.
“Sorry.” Tav offers the man an apologetic smile. “Didn’t realize I was staring.”
“I can’t fault you for having good taste.” Astarion tilts his head, showing Tav his face in profile. There’s mischief in his eyes.
Tav gestures at Astarion’s sleeve. “I didn’t realize you sewed.”
“Oh, yes. Well, normally I make my repairs during my watch at night, but this is delicate enough work that I wanted to wait for better light.” Astarion holds out his arm, showing Tav where he’s been reinforcing the stitching around one of the two small buttonholes at his wrist. “Now that I have the option of sunlight, I might as well indulge.”
“You know,” Tav says, tilting his head. “I should have expected this. It’s a very ‘you’ thing to do.”
Hearing that, Astarion arches an eyebrow. “And what is that supposed to mean?”
“It seems like a hobby that would appeal to your sensibilities.” Tav yawns. “Stabbing things over and over again, I mean.”
In the warm light of dawn, jokes like that feel safe. They make the horror seem that much further out of reach, like some nightmare that can be forgotten after the night has passed.
Astarion cracks a smile. This one is wide enough that Tav can see a fang peeking out beneath the man’s lip. “You know me so well.”
Tav doesn’t, not really. He’d like to, though, and he’s picking up more and more pieces of information as he goes.
As Astarion returns to his sewing, Tav takes a closer look at that ruffled shirt the man is wearing. It’s the same one he had on that first night in camp together after the crash, which means it’s probably the one he’d been wearing the day he was abducted from Baldur’s Gate and taken aboard the nautiloid. Tav has always thought it was an elegant garment, and it is… but now that he knows to look, he can see evidence of the numerous small repairs that have kept it looking its best. Reinforced seams. Reattached ruffles. Nearly-invisible patches. All of it is held together by rows of tiny, neat stitches. It’s far too much work to have been done only in the short time that has passed since the crash.
That isn’t surprising, Tav supposes. He doesn’t know many details about Astarion’s life before they started traveling together, but he knows that for the last two centuries, Astarion was compelled by magic to obey any commands given to him by the vampire who turned him. From what little Astarion has shared, it seems unlikely that his former master frequently lavished gifts of fine new clothes upon his slave. Astarion likely needed to learn to make do.
… How cold is a vampire’s blood, anyway? Astarion’s touch feels much cooler than that of a warm-blooded mortal, but Tav has never had Astarion’s blood on his hands, thank the gods. Theoretically, though, there’s likely some warmth to the stuff. Enough that it wouldn’t be ice cold, anyway. However, Tav imagines that it probably would be cold enough that he would be able to feel the difference between the blood of the living and the blood of the undead. For example, if Tav were to crack Astarion’s master’s ribs open and crush that dead heart in his fist, it would probably be a unique and memorable sensation.
Tav pauses.
That wasn’t the Urge. Those thoughts were all Tav’s doing. It’s a comfort to know that the thing is still silent for the moment, at least, but regardless, he needs to calm down. This kind of violent fantasizing might give the Urge a foothold. Let it sink its claws even deeper into him. Increase the odds that it will try to take over again.
Best to cut this off now, then. Tav gets up from his seat and ducks back into his tent to fetch his tea and his pouch of herbs. It’s a good idea to start brewing the pot. Settle his nerves. Give his hands something to keep them busy, just in case they start to twitch of their own accord.
There’s no use in getting angry now, so far from Baldur’s Gate. Hells, Tav doesn’t even have a full name for the man. Astarion only referred to his former master by his family name, Szarr, which doesn’t mean a single fucking thing to what’s left of Tav’s useless brain.
… Still, even in a city like Baldur’s Gate, how many vampires could there be? Tav’s a tracker. He can follow a trail, even over cobblestones and slate roofs. After all, those streets used to be his hunting ground in his past life. They could become so again, just for one night.
Tav pours near-boiling water into his cup. Forces himself to focus on the heat he can feel in his palms, hot enough that it’s almost pain. Forces himself to think only of the smell of leaves and flowers bleeding out into the water. Forces himself to breathe.
The headache that has been quietly throbbing in Tav’s temples and the back of his brain all morning has gotten so much stronger in just the last few minutes. He realizes that he’s been clenching his jaw shut tight enough to make his teeth hurt. Tav tries to relax. The tea is too hot to drink, so he holds it balanced on his knee and watches Astarion sew.
It’s not entirely dissimilar to watching Astarion pick a lock, now that he’s thinking about it. The man’s fingers are quick. Nimble. Graceful, even. No movement is wasted. Every stitch is placed with the precision of a careful eye and a steady hand, and there’s an easy rhythm to the motion of it all, too. Gods, there are times when Tav envies Astarion’s control over himself. What he wouldn’t give for hands like those, hands that do exactly what he wants and nothing more…
Astarion crosses one ankle over the other, and the motion catches Tav’s eye. There’s more stitching at the hems of Astarion’s trouser legs. The thread there is lighter than the surrounding fabric, and the pattern is more decorative than a simple repair would need.
“So, when you’re not fixing your clothes, do you ever do it for fun?” Tav asks.
He regrets his phrasing a half second later, once Astarion’s sly smile registers in his tired brain.
“I have been known to, on occasion. When I need to find a way to pass the time.” Astarion shifts where he sits on the log, stretching his legs out in front of him. Spreading them ever so slightly wider apart. “My, aren’t you curious this morning.”
Hells. If Tav’s tadpole doesn’t kill him first, Astarion’s flirting will.
Tav has only physically fought Astarion once, that first time they met outside the wreck of the nautiloid. That hadn’t been the best demonstration of Astarion’s skill in battle, however, as Tav had barely proved a challenge. Since then, though, Tav has gotten to watch his friend go up against enough of their foes to recognize Astarion’s genius with a blade. He’s an expert at getting under people’s guard, at finding their weak points. At striking first, and without hesitation.
It’s an almost identical experience to talking to the man, actually. Most conversations with Astarion feel like verbal sparring matches, and Tav often leaves them feeling like he did that first time they met: on his back in the dirt with a knife to his throat, confused but kind of into it. Metaphorically, of course.
That’s not to say that talking to Astarion is unpleasant. It’s often the highlight of Tav’s day. However, he has absolutely no idea what the man even wants. Astarion flirts like this with everyone at camp, shameless and over the top, and it never goes anywhere. Tav’s best guess is that Astarion is simply indulging his own off-kilter sense of humor.
After all that has happened in these past few days, Tav is glad that he is still someone Astarion wants to joke around with. The last time their tadpoles linked their minds together, Tav showed Astarion… everything. His amnesia, the extent of the damage that has been done to his memories. The blank spaces and rough-hewn edges where it feels as though pieces of his brain have been hacked away. His constant fear of the Urge—not that Astarion or anyone else seem to understand what’s going there, which makes Tav wonder how much his friends can actually see of his past life’s memories when they’re sharing thoughts.
He also unintentionally showed Astarion that last conversation Tav had with Quil, when the bard had tried to get him to talk about his apparently very obvious affection for one of his companions.
With all her talk of love songs, Quil had seemed like an expert on the subject, so Tav asked her how a person can know if they are in love. The answer she gave him was confusing, and also exactly the sort of thing a bard would say. There were metaphors about falling, and flying, and catching on fire, none of which seemed like they applied at all to Tav’s situation. When he looks at Astarion, Tav doesn’t feel anything a bard would write about in a song. He just… feels a little better. Like the weight on his shoulders isn’t as heavy as it was a few moments before.
Tav feels similarly about all of his friends, but there’s a difference in scale that is hard not to notice. And there are other things, too. Whenever he wants to ask his friends to weigh in on something, he goes to Astarion first more often than not, even if he knows he’ll probably disagree with Astarion’s idea. He asks Astarion to go with him on nearly every mission, even if there’s little chance of running into locked doors or needing to set up an ambush. Twice now, when Tav thought he might be about to die, he’d taken comfort at the thought that Astarion might be the one to give him the mercy of a clean death.
There’s also the small matter of the fact that his body completely freaks out whenever Astarion touches him, in a way that doesn’t happen when it’s a touch from Wyll or Gale or Lae’zel. It’s pleasurable, Tav thinks. He knows he wants more of it, anyway. However, it’s so overwhelming that Tav isn’t able to actually enjoy it most of the time. It is at least a rare occurrence, given that Astarion only ever touches him when he feeds. Tav tries to disguise the shock he feels as pain from the bite. He doesn’t know how successful he is, though.
Although Tav has no way of knowing exactly what Astarion saw inside his head, or how he interpreted it, Tav is happy to know that it doesn’t seem to have changed anything between them. Astarion still plays around with him, still jokes and flirts and teases, and it’s… something of a relief for Tav to know that he hasn’t frightened the man off. With the feelings, or the murderous tendencies, either one.
Strange and confusing as they can sometimes be, Tav would have missed Astarion’s jokes, even the bleak ones. Especially the bleak ones, actually. Tav spends his days carrying the Urge around with him, trying not to let it of its leash. There’s something wonderfully freeing, then, about joking about bloodlust and violence with someone who has never seemed to flinch away from either one. It’s harder to fear something if you can laugh at it.
Besides, Tav’s mind does best when he gives it something to grapple with, something to keep it from wandering. To date, nothing has proved quite as effective at keeping his thoughts occupied as trying to keep up with Astarion’s mind games. At this point, Tav has given up on ever managing to solve them, but he’s always eager to try.
At the moment, though, he’s not sure how he wants to respond to Astarion’s joke, or how he thinks Astarion might want him to respond. Is Tav meant to flirt back? That sounds like a good way to get himself tongue tied. It’s always sex or violence with this man, so if one is off the table…
“Well, we can’t have you getting bored.” Tav takes a long drink of his tea. “Between all of the near-death experiences, I mean.”
“Unfortunately, near-death experiences tend to be rather hard on one’s wardrobe. There’s always something that needs to be mended…” Astarion makes a show of turning his attention back to his sleeve. “I barely go a day without catching myself on thorns, and goblin arrows snag so dreadfully.”
“There’s always a risk of getting burned by one of Gale’s spells,” Tav says, glancing up as their group’s wizard emerges, yawning, from his tent.
“Or Karlach’s engine.” Astarion lifts up his other arm to show Tav that one of the ruffles at the cuff is shorter than the others—not that Tav would have noticed if it hadn’t been pointed out. “I sat too close to her at dinner one time…”
“I said I was sorry, Fangs,” Karlach calls out from across the campsite. Even with the preliminary repairs that have been made to her engine, she worries that she’s too flammable to have a tent with canvas walls. Instead, she’s been sleeping under a canopy they raised up on poles… and has apparently been watching this entire conversation play out, judging by the sharp-toothed grin on her face.
Tav doesn’t respond. He just studiously drinks his tea.
A few more tents open. Scratch the dog comes bounding out, eager to start the day running and sniffing. Apparently, he’d slept in Wyll’s tent last night.
Wyll himself walks out a few moments later, stretching his arms over his head. His too-short sleep shirt rides up nearly to his ribs, and at first, Tav can only laugh. It’s less funny when he catches a glimpse of the raised scars on Wyll’s torso. Sword, he thinks, or maybe claws. There’s something that might have been a wound from an arrow. Marks earned on the Blade of Frontiers’ past hunts, no doubt. By now, the scars have all faded to a deeper brown than the surrounding skin. For such a young man, Wyll has seen more than his fair share of battle.
As the campsite comes to life around them, Astarion leans in just a little—not close enough to touch, even by accident, but close enough to pretend to whisper in Tav’s ear.
“If you don’t take the time to make repairs, you start to look like… well.” Astarion casts his gaze around the camp, never letting his eyes linger on anyone in particular. “Between you and me, the cropped look is simply ravishing on dear Wyll. However, if he keeps chopping the bottom edge off whenever he snags it on something, it won’t be long until he has no shirt left at all.” He gives Tav a sidelong look, as though they’re in on this joke together. “How terrible that would be.”
Wyll, who had just started to strap on the chest piece of his armor, makes eye contact with Tav before turning to Astarion. “All I’m hearing is that you’re volunteering to be the new camp tailor.”
Astarion touches his hand to his silent heart in mock affront. “How dare you imply I would volunteer for anything? Now, if you’re willing to pay by the stitch, we can talk.”
“By the stitch? Ye gods, is that how they do it in Baldur’s Gate?” Gale asks. He has a flat pan in his hand, which he settles into the embers at the edge of the fire. “I never had a tailor back home try to get me to pay by the stitch. If I didn’t know better, Astarion, I would worry that this was attempted extortion.”
“Well, you’re welcome to shop around for a better price.” Astarion gestures around them, encompassing the wilderness that extends for miles in any direction.
As soon as Gale is at ground level, Scratch senses an opportunity to solicit pets and comes bounding up to the man. Gale laughs, and does his best to please the dog, though he does seem a little unfamiliar with the process. From what Tav has learned so far, it sounds like their resident wizard is more of a cat person. Also, a “staying inside his tower and not going outside very often” person. Still, looking at Gale’s hands as he awkwardly rubs Scratch’s fluffy white ears, it seems as though their wizard is developing quite a suntan.
“Should I start charging for every time I cast Prestidigitation to get giant spider blood off of someone’s clothes, do you think?” Gale grins, then stands up to head back to his tent. He calls back over his shoulder, “Or when I cast Mending to fix a broken armor strap?”
“If you charge for each Firebolt, can we spare our eyebrows by refusing to pay?” Astarion counters.
Out of the corner of his eye, Tav sees Shadowheart leave her tent, tucking something away in her bag as she does. Tav only gets a glimpse before it’s gone again, but he catches the vague shape. It’s a nasty-looking thing, many-faceted and edged with spikes, all made from dark metal. If Tav had to guess, he’d assume it was probably her holy symbol… though Tav has no recollection of what god might be represented by such a thing. No surprise there, of course. He’s seen her concentrating on it before, though, on nights when he comes to relieve her on watch. Whatever it is, Shadowheart is always quick to hide it.
She hasn’t yet donned her chainmail for the day, but as always, her dark hair is perfectly arranged, no lock out of place. Severe bangs, that long plait in the back tied up in fine chains… now that he’s thinking about it, Tav realizes he’s never once seen their cleric with her hair down. Is that a requirement of her faith, then? He has no idea. Shadowheart won’t even tell them who it is that she worships.
“I see that we are taking the morning to remind each other of the valuable services we provide to the group. In that case—Hello, I’m the one responsible for making sure none of you bleed to death.” Shadowheart casts a pointed look at Tav. “In spite of some people’s best efforts to the contrary.”
“Good morning to you, too, Shadowheart.” Astarion gives her a mock bow. “Charming as always, my dear. Why, you’re memento mori made flesh.”
“As long as someone remembers it,” she says. Shadowheart touches a hand to Tav’s forehead and says the words of her spell. A wave of warmth passes through his body, and when it is over, he finds that he is feeling much better. He’s still exhausted, but the headache is greatly reduced and his dizziness is gone.
“Thank you,” Tav tells her, and smiles. “You always take such good care of me.”
“That makes one of us.”
Karlach joins them, stretching and yawning, and drops onto the log opposite Tav and Astarion. She sits right in the middle, aware that no one else will want to sit beside her. “Did I hear right, Fangs? You sew?”
Astarion cuts Tav a look. “This is why I was only doing my mending during my watch. People find out that you’re good with your hands, and suddenly, that’s all you are to them.”
“Do you know how to sew a button back on?” Karlach asks, persistent.
“I do. Do you actually have… any buttons on your clothing? At all?” Astarion tilts his head to look at her. “I’m seeing a lot of leather straps and buckles and metal studs—all very flattering on you, my dear, but a bit outside of my area of expertise.”
“It isn’t for me. It’s for Clive.”
“Clive?”
Tav can’t help but laugh as Astarion glances around the campsite as though expecting to see a secret eighth member of their party he’s failed to notice before now.
“My bear.” Karlach points back at her tent. Beneath the canopy, nestled among the blankets she’s spread out on the ground, is a drooping stuffed bear. “He’s about to lose an eye.”
“How terrible.” Astarion turns back to his own sleeve and sets about tying off his thread, seemingly content to let the conversation end there.
“C’mon. Please?” Although Karlach certainly looks the part of the Hells-forged berserker, every inch of her crimson skin covered in some combination of scar tissue, tattoos, or metal vents for releasing excess heat from her engine… the woman can make puppy-dog eyes like no one else. Even her tail droops.
Astarion sighs. “Fine. As our camp’s healer is very busy berating Tav, I suppose I will have to be the one to perform emergency surgery.” Before she can thank him, he puts up a hand. “Because it’s you, I’ll take my payment in alcohol instead of gold. Bring the patient and something drinkable by my tent tonight, and I’ll see what I can do.”
Karlach grins at him. “It’s a deal.”
“I’m shocked, Astarion,” Wyll says, settling into his own seat. “That was almost kindhearted of you.”
“Was it? Well, I’d be happy to give you a turn after I’ve finished with Clive.” Astarion waves a hand at Wyll’s face. “If you ever decide you want a change from that stone eye of yours, just let me know. Of course, we’d have to find a bigger button…”
Tav took a drink at exactly the wrong moment and inhales tea directly into his nose. While he’s trying not to drown, Shadowheart gives him a withering look.
“It has been five minutes,” she says. “Can you please try a little harder to stay alive?”
Gale returns, a bowl of chopped potatoes in hand, still wet from the stream at the edge of camp. Lae’zel is following close behind him. Apparently, Gale has managed to draft her into helping him set up to cook. She’s carrying a basket with both hands, an expression of studious concentration on her sage-green face.
“Oooh, what’s for breakfast?” Karlach asks.
“Potatoes and bird eggs,” Lae’zel says.
“Thank you for specifying that they’re bird eggs,” Wyll says, casting a glance at the contents of the basket. “That is the animal I like my eggs from the best, after all.”
“These are duck eggs,” Tav explains. “Lae’zel went out with me to forage yesterday evening. We found a few nests further upstream.”
“Ah, well. That sounds really good, then.” Wyll chuckles. “Given the kind of monsters we’ve seen lurking around, I’d been afraid to ask what a non-bird alternative might have been.”
“This part of Faerûn has proven disappointingly free of neogi.” Lae’zel says it as though this fact is a personal affront to her. “They are worthy prey for a hunter, unlike the frightened beasts that cower in the bushes here. Every part of a neogi is edible, save for the venom sacs. In particular, their eggs are delicious when fried.”
“And aren’t your people an egg laying species as well, Lae’zel?” Gale asks, holding out his hand for the basket. Lae’zel only stares at him.
“Yes, but a gith egg would not be food under any circumstance. Any githyanki would proudly starve rather than slake their hunger on one of Queen Vlaakith’s gifts.”
Gale puts his other hand up in a gesture of surrender. “Of course. I just wanted to let Wyll know, in case it might have been a contributing factor to why you wanted to specify these are from a bird. I thought it might be… well, perhaps a bit odd for you to hear us casually talking about eating eggs.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Good!” Wide-eyed, Gale awkwardly takes the basket of eggs from her and settles down onto the ground to start cooking. “I’m very glad our breakfast choice for today is not a touchy subject.”
While the others are busy with their morning bicker session, Tav finds his eyes wandering towards the banks of the creek at the edge of camp. It might just be a trick of the light, but for a moment, the sand there looks red. Tav stares at it until reality reasserts itself over memory.
Three nights ago, an innocent person was slaughtered in this camp. She died by Tav’s hand, and as a group, they buried her. Today, looking at the friends gathered around him, one would think that such grief had never visited this place.
Tav has no idea what his life was like before the crash. Before he met these strange, wonderful people. This is the only life he has ever known, and it has been the easiest thing in the world to fall into its rhythms.
Wake up. Seek Shadowheart for healing. Eat breakfast. Scout around. Probably get into a fight. Come home. Bathe in the cool stream at the edge of camp. Play fetch with Scratch. Eat dinner. Laugh with his friends around the fire. Let Astarion eat his dinner. Sleep. Toss and turn. Repeat.
If it weren’t for the looming threat of the worms in their heads, Tav would be happy to live the rest of his life like this.
The others deserve better, though.
Beside him, Astarion is laughing. There are little crinkles at the corners of his eyes, and he looks… calm. Relaxed. Maybe even happy. Astarion turns his head and catches Tav’s eye. He’s still smiling, and Tav wishes he could freeze this moment exactly like as it is.
There will be more grief later, more pain. More horror, and fear. For now, though… there’s this. It’s fragile, and temporary, and wonderful, and Tav is willing to do whatever it takes to protect it. To protect these people who have decided to let him stay here, in spite of all the reasons he’s given them not to.
No matter what lies ahead for them, no matter what dangers they are to face, Tav refuses to give up. Not even if it kills him. His own life is such a small, wretched thing in the face of what they stand to lose. He’ll gamble it as many times as he needs to if there’s even a slim chance of success.
Sometimes Tav finds himself contemplating what he’ll do if he can’t get himself under control. If it gets really bad, he’ll ask one of his friends to kill him. Astarion is his top choice… but if he says no, Tav thinks Lae’zel would probably help him out.
Still, it might not ever get to the point where he’d need to worry about that. This is a dangerous life they lead. He could die at any time—from the tadpole, or a stray arrow, or under the teeth of some roving monster. If Tav’s heart stops, the Urge will likely die, too.
At his lowest moments, remembering that fact can be a grim kind of comfort.
Right now, though, on this beautiful summer morning, it’s hard to worry about what the future might hold. Even though Tav is tired, and so very fucking scared… he’s happy, too.