Now that they were magically silent, there was no way to have conversation as they rode down the road. This suited Artemis fine. He was frightened of the loving glances his companion kept sending his way. Jarlaxle, in his estimation, was acting just like a woman. First they'd argued, and now the drow wanted to make up as if nothing had happened.
Well, it had.
Any sane man would have held a grudge against Artemis for what he'd done. He'd bothered Jarlaxle with his dreams, then he'd insisted that Jarlaxle become his bedmate simply because Jarlaxle was the only person he'd trusted at the time, and then he'd cut it off when he realized that the pervasive emotion he'd been struggling with for months was only lust, and deserved to die violently.
He'd thought that they were becoming friends – then just as quickly, had thought that they cared for each other in…ways.
The assassin sent a smoldering glare at Jarlaxle when the drow wasn't looking. He was angry with himself.
He lived in a world where there was no room for mistakes. Most of the time, he was able to uphold that standard. But somehow, his perfection seemed a dam behind which mistakes built up. Over time, what could have been any number of little mistakes converged into a mistake like a mountainous blob of hideous misfortune.
Artemis Entreri could easily see his mistakes ruining their friendship – partnership, he corrected. Whatever. He didn't know what it was anymore. It was all too tangled up. And it was his fault.
Mm. In the 'friendship' department, things usually were.
He'd had a friend or two, or a couple of people who claimed to be his friends, but usually a couple weeks of him made them so sick of his attitude that they'd exited with a lot of boring, self-righteous speeches, yelled at the top of their lungs. He'd been less than crushed, and had told them so at the nearest opportunity. The first one had been a girl who couldn't believe that he was an assassin. He'd honestly almost snapped her neck to shut her up.
But Jarlaxle wasn't like any of those other people who had claimed to want to know him. At first, he'd thought that the drow's smiles and his melodramatic mannerisms were insincere. With time, he'd changed his mind and decided that Jarlaxle was simply a madman – some kind of lunatic psychopath escaped from the Underdark. Clever, but hindered by the fact that he was utterly deranged. That impression was replaced by a third, which was the most complicated impression of the drow mercenary yet; a man controlled by conflicting philosophies fighting for dominance.
He could almost see the platitudes writhing under the surface of Jartlaxle's skin. 'The best way to fight the demon of fear is to laugh at it'; 'Honesty is the best policy'; 'The only good man is a dead man'; 'Kill first, ask questions later'; 'A white lie never hurt anyone'; 'Silence is golden'; 'If you smile, then the world smiles back'. Artemis didn't think Jarlaxle knew what to make of all the sayings he'd collected, all the conventional wisdom he seemed to fond of.
Artemis found himself drawn to Jarlaxle, drawn by the constant conflicts the drow held, conflicts that Jarlaxle expressed even in small ways, like his taste in clothing. He wanted something from Jarlaxle, wanted something he hadn't wanted from someone else for as long as he could remember. It manifested itself as a sort of hunger in the assassin's heart that kept him awake at night.
And now he'd found out that that wasn't really what he'd wanted; all he'd wanted was carnal pleasure.
Artemis frowned, beginning to give himself a headache.
Or was it true that he had, in fact, truly wanted what he hadn't dared ask for from anyone for fear of being killed or tortured?
He was coming back to the site of the tangle again. If he could only pick apart that knot, he'd be free. This he felt instinctively; he knew it to whatever core of being he possessed. If he could just work himself free…
First in Aberiss, he'd divulged his embarrassing nightmares of being stalked by Jarlaxle, then trapped in an alley and being attacked by the drow. Jarlaxle had been…understanding. There was no other word for it. He had listened, he had not grown angry as the assassin had feared, and he had promised not to do any such thing. And they'd implied some sort of agreement to be friends. And at the time, in the early hours of the morning and disoriented by his nightmares, he'd been grateful. He'd been happy. The next day was a blur. He vaguely remembered looking over what mercenary jobs Aberiss had to offer. The memory had strange, warm edges to it. It hadn't been remarkable in any way, and yet he remembered it as being remarkable, as being special. He remembered laughing with Jarlaxle over the ridiculousness of the job descriptions.
And that was the beginning of the knot. He'd thought that what he wanted so badly from Jarlaxle was closeness. This translated somehow into the actions that he was ashamed of; somehow when he tried to make sense of their new friendship, he'd ended up…saying things, and doing things. Sexual things. With Jarlaxle. He would never have chosen someone so…It was Jarlaxle.
On top of that, once he'd done them, he was upset at Jarlaxle for doing the same things that the drow mercenary had always done. He was driven to the urge to hack someone's body apart just because Jarlaxle had noticed the assets of the barmaid that waited on them when they'd eaten dinner. In short, Artemis had been insane. He never wanted to feel that way again.
And now Jarlaxle was wondering what had happened, and Artemis was too closed-mouthed with his numbing feeling of being in a nightmare to tell him.
This can't be reality, Artemis Entreri thought, resisting the urge to openly bury his face in his hands.
What he'd done was abundantly clear to him now. He'd been right to say what he'd said to Jarlaxle when they rested the horses. It was a mistake. The assassin straightened in his saddle bravely, clenching his jaw to ward off an unfamiliar emotion that was causing him pain. And if there was an ounce of caring in his companion, Jarlaxle would let him explain, let him untangle the knot he'd created, and let them part ways.
The magical silence weighed heavily on his chest.
Jarlaxle, meanwhile, was thinking about his own side of their strange relationship. He realized that in the midst of his revelation, he'd been so pleased that he'd once again overlooked the key component that Artemis' confusion played in whether or not they actually had a future together.
He knew there was something incredible at work if he could feel real compassion for someone else, much less feel as deeply as he did about Artemis. That part of his life had largely shut down, what small representation it had in his life, when Zak died. Or, if you prefer, Jarlaxle thought, committed suicide.
Since then, he'd really only felt mild stirrings of interest or polite sympathy for other people. There were a few in his mercenary organization whom he'd rather not lose, but he thought of them as possessions. This didn't bother him, since they almost certainly in turn viewed him as some sort of hostile creature either to be placated or killed as soon as possible. It was a relationship he could live with.
But not when it came to Artemis. He'd grown concerned lately because he did not think of Artemis Entreri as an assassin, as a valuable asset, or even as a diplomatic tool or a passport. He thought of Artemis as a person. The first couple months with Artemis, he had been simply Entreri the assassin to Jarlaxle.
After that, Jarlaxle knew that lines in his mind began to blur. Soon, the human was 'Entreri'. And now, more recently, even 'Entreri' had sounded too distant in his head, and the man had become 'Artemis' to him.
He'd always casually noted that his companion was attractive, for a human, and this had amused him. Unfortunately, now it didn't. His companion's appearance gnawed at him. He couldn't be sure whether he was worried, made lonely, or attracted to Artemis.
Why couldn't it be all three? he asked himself. It fits.
He'd studied human behavior –after all, if he planned to become a part of a surface society, elves certainly wouldn't take him. His best bet was convincing the humans of the surface that he was an acceptable addition to their lives. That meant assimilating. And he'd tried. He'd learned the language, reasonably eliminating his accent, he'd taken a profession that humans allowed room for other races to participate in, and he'd shown that he could work with them. He'd befriended Artemis.
Or, he'd tried. But to his surprise, the assassin was sticking out of his society, much like Jarlaxle had in Menzoberranzan. He found himself using what he'd learned in drow society to try to communicate with Artemis. Jarlaxle always believed that communication was a key in any relationship.
Artemis was very much like a drow. Young, perhaps. Jarlaxle had found himself feeling almost a sort of brotherly feeling – at least he thought it might be that, since he hadn't exactly grown up around his brothers, and if he had, he might have been forced to kill most of them, given the nature of drow society.
Jarlaxle had decided that he would do Artemis a favor and turn him back into a human. That was how he'd thought of it – a transformation back to the way the assassin was supposed to have turned out in the first place.
Then, even that game had turned into something more.
It had gotten to be more and more about himself.
Every time he thought about trying to tell Artemis something that could make the man self-sufficient, he'd drawn back and hesitated. He didn't want to let go. Jarlaxle couldn't do it because he wanted to have something Artemis needed. That was the same way he kept control over his mercenaries. But now, it was for a different motive that he'd…done this. The drow mercenary didn't want to give up his self appointed role in Artemis' life. It gave him excuses to meddle, to be nosy, and it was all for his own benefit.
If he really cared about Artemis, he probably wouldn't have done it. Artemis needed a real friend. Jarlaxle knew there were plenty of surface dwellers who wouldn't do the things he'd done. They would be reliable friends. They wouldn't lead Artemis further into danger on a whim to get a high off of escaping death and earning grandiose sums of money.
Perhaps after living in the Underdark so long, he was addicted to that feeling; the feeling of death. Perhaps Artemis was right; he did wallow in disaster. He needed it, to justify the way he lived his life. All the paranoia, the magical items, the insanely twisted plans. Then he could point at the events and say, I was justified!
If he cared, he'd free Artemis of his influence while he still could. If it wasn't already too late, thanks to him.
Jarlaxle didn't know what he was going to do without Artemis the next time someone accused him of kidnapping small children or poisoning crops and other colloquial, superstitious things, but he knew that shouldn't be the assassin's problem.