Artemis' Feelings

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Jarlaxle sat on the edge of the bed and began to read. He had to concentrate on the words, so much so that he was soon lost in them, only dimly aware that Artemis was standing near the door with his arms crossed, watching the drow unfold the piece of paper and squint at it grimly.

'There is no way to tell you what I have to tell you, so I have to do it and be done with it.'

The drow paused at this opening line. Jarlaxle could almost hear Artemis speak the words.

He tried to imagine what frame of mind Artemis must have been in when he began to write. Jarlaxle couldn't.

He didn't understand a need to die – not really. Those times when he felt almost bad enough to figure out a way to kill himself, his survival instinct always kicked in. It was almost a voice hissing at him in his most lost moments to not throw anything away, that he'd cheated and scraped and taken anything that he needed for survival, that he'd already made the decision to live when he didn't have to, so he couldn't turn back now.

And Artemis has almost done the same thing, the drow mercenary thought. He too has suffered great dangers and forces threatening to wipe him off the face of this plane at an early age, yet he lives. Jarlaxle scowled in frustration at the mystery; because if he and Artemis were so alike, why did he choose to live while Artemis chose to die and had to be convinced to find another way?

He narrowed his eyes at the piece of paper and looked for the answers.

Artemis had continued, 'The reason for what I have to tell you for ought to be obvious. There was no way to tell you how I feel, so I had to do it. There was no way to tell you, but now there is.'

This letter, Jarlaxle assumed Artemis had meant. Buy what he didn't know was why an inability to communicate, so common for the assassin, had finally led up to this attempted act of self-destruction. If he'd been planning on murdering himself, then why did he wait until now? Jarlaxle thought.

'Why I didn't tell you before should also be obvious.'

Artemis' words were so real, so exactly mirroring what the man would say aloud if he were having a discussion, that the dark elf found himself having a dialogue with the inanimate piece of paper. "Should it?" Jarlaxle murmured. His eyes still scanned the page.

'I know you don't want the dead speaking ill of you, but you pry. Your shit kept keeping me from saying what was on my mind. That's why this way is better. By the end of the letter, you'll agree with me.'

Jarlaxle flinched.

'First of all, there is everything I wish I hadn't done. I wish I hadn't taken my father's crap, I wish I hadn't taken my first sword and killed a man, and I wish I hadn't been cruel to everyone I meet. Most of them didn't deserve it. I know most of the women I've ever met didn't deserve it, and they didn't deserve me making them live in terror until I had gone. You'll hate me for this, I know it, but I loved you and I loved our old relationship – I loved being around you. And I' – here the word was scratched out with a series of lines and angry slashes – 'it up.' Jarlaxle supposed the assassin couldn't decide whether or not to use one word or the other. He knew of two the man could have chosen that fit Artemis' description of the situation.

"We didn't lose anything," the drow whispered to the page, becoming completely oblivious to the fact that Artemis was still in the room. Jarlaxle had the relaxing hum of his protection spells around the room, resonating off the delicate wands the enchantments originated from, safely tucked through loops along his belt. It was second nature to school himself to relax in response to his measures to secure the room.

'I want to say how much I love you. I, Artemis Entreri, fucking love you. I love fucking you. I love being around you. Every goddamn miserable habit, every miserable, unavoidable, repulsive, or painful, or humiliating thing you ever subjected me to I loved and it was you. Don't make me live without you. But don't make me live with you. Don't stop me. Don't make me live with you and everything I've done. If you make me live, I will fucking kill you. I will raise you, consider it money well spent, and kill you again.'

The drow slid a wary glance over to his companion, who he realized with an unpleasant lurch in the pit of his stomach was actually inside the room and very much alive. And so far, Jarlaxle noted, not trying to kill me for saving his life. Well, it's a start.

'You don't know how I feel about you. I had four broken limbs, a rag stuffed in my mouth, and the brains beat out of me with a long, hot object up my ass, and I wasn't old enough to escape. That feeling is the same feeling I have when I am with you. But when I'm with you, I can't escape because for once, there is no place to go that I want to be instead of with you. I'm stuck because you're attractive. Because even though I know it's a lie, I see your smile and I think you're smiling just for me. Because no one, no one in all forty-three years I've been cursed to survive, no one ever treated me better than you treat me when I'm around. And you're a fucking drow. How pathetically shitty is that?'

Jarlaxle didn't think he could read anymore. His mind was too full. His head spun. He had to sit there in silence on the edge of the bed and stare off meaninglessly without really looking at anything to order his thoughts for a while. The first thing he said when he found out that his eyes were actually focusing on the rays of sunlight refracted in the glass of the window was, "…You love me?"

"Read," Artemis said, turning his back on the drow mercenary. His voice was harsh. It stunned Jarlaxle to realize that the reason was because the man was struggling with intense emotion. "It's not done. Read."

Jarlaxle almost said, 'I can't,' but he bit it off and prevented himself from making that mistake. He knew it was one before he even spoke it. He didn't know how Artemis had managed to be calm the entire day. Even happy. Even courteous. He knew that the assassin must be on a precarious balance, ready to tip one way or the other – he couldn't have completely re-stabilized in such a short amount of time.

This morning he was going to kill himself, this afternoon he was happy, and now this evening he's pensive and worried, the drow thought. He might explode in a frenzy on me.

The dark elven mercenary bowed his head, closing his eyes. Jarlaxle curled his fingers around the bridge of his nose and rested his thumb on his temple in a tired gesture. He loves me? "Artemis. We need to talk."

"Read."

There was one pained moment that lasted an eternity until Jarlaxle was able to pull himself away and begin reading again. It took him almost thirty seconds to decipher Artemis' handwriting again.

'I want to thank you for everything you've done for me. You didn't have to; you just did, whether I wanted you to or not. And that meant something to me. Past tense, since I won't be with the land of the living for very long. You helped me kill Drizzt. Thank you. You don't know what you did for me. Every time he won, he gave me the feeling that he'd just kicked me in the ribs and bruised my soul. I had to make him stop. I had to win. I had to kill him. I had to. He…makes his words sting and his eyes cut me up into ten different pieces of leave me to die. What did I do? I was doing my job. My job. He was doing… What was he doing? Being a vigilante? Getting revenge? He should have been taking his quarrel up with my employers – it's them he objects to. Them he hates. Wants to disembowel. I merely did something for them to survive. He's not surviving. He's trying to kill me because he feels like it. Tried. I keep telling myself. Tried. He's dead. He can't leave me alone, even when he's dead. He keeps coming back. Those dreams… I told you about those disturbing dreams. His purple eyes. I never want to see purple again.'

Jarlaxle raised an eyebrow. "My hat's purple," he said.

"I hate your hat, too." Artemis' voice was brusque. He sounded as though it hurt his throat a little.

"I wonder, is that really the reason why?" The drow gave the hat lying on the floor a curious glance.

"Get a different hat."

Jarlaxle tried to fit in this new insight in his mind and felt slightly dizzy with all the information he was soaking up. He felt like a leech that was bloated from too much blood at once. He turned back to the letter and began reading when the room had steadied.

'And I want to thank you for being my friend. I don't deserve it. I didn't deserve anything. But you still did it. Is it any wonder that I'm in love with you? You didn't do this on purpose, I know it, but I am, and that's what's fucked us up, it was me, you didn't have anything to do with it this time.

You always healed me when I became injured. Always. It wasn't a pause, or the look in your eyes before you held out the orb, it was that you did it promptly after I was in pain. You don't want to hear this. That's partly why I'm writing it. So you don't have to hear it. Knowing you, you might have guessed it among hundreds of guesses continually being generated by your obsessive pondering. Thank you for not being like my father thank you for healing me instead of watching me quiver. Thank you for never cheating me, never beating me, never raping me, never trying to make me feel worse than I did already. I'm doing that myself without any help.

Artemis

That was it. Jarlaxle turned the page over uncomprehendingly, but the back side was blank save for places where the ink had soaked through. The dark elf couldn't believe it. That's all he left me with. He left me with a piece of paper jumbled up with his disturbed feelings. He would have left me with a piece of paper and his dead body.

Jarlaxle turned around, looked at the assassin standing there, dressed in a stranger's clothing and looking oddly scruffy, with his eye patch over one eye. He leapt to his feet, boots silent, crossed the room in three or four steps, cape flying behind him, everything in slow motion inside his head. He opened his arms and flung himself at the assassin, tightening his arms around the man's body as if he were never going to let go. He buried his head in the space between Artemis' neck and shoulder. "Why did you give me that letter?"

Artemis said, "I realized that the only reason I felt better was because I'd told you. Then that I hadn't because the letter was still in my pocket." He awkwardly wrapped his arms around Jarlaxle, uncomfortably aware that they were sharing intimacies usually locked away. "I couldn't tell you, and I still can't, so you had to read it. I can't…talk."

"Why don't you burn it? It's incriminating," Jarlaxle said. "It makes you vulnerable." He held it up between them, trying to give it back.

Artemis put his hand on top of Jarlaxle's and forced the drow to lower his hand. "Keep it. It's yours, anyway. Would have been. If I hadn't. Decided to live."

"Will you allow me to ask questions about this, or am I supposed to lock it away in a drawer somewhere and let it moulder?" Jarlaxle asked, looking straight into Artemis' eyes, sliding the eye patch away from the man's left eye.

Artemis looked down, not meeting his eyes. His expression was uncertain. "What would you ask of me?"