AN: I refuse to apologize for striding so blithely into this fresh hell, and in fact I'm snagging all your elbows and dragging you into this toothy muckiness with me. I expect this will be the first of at least a few oneshots, but one thing at a time. Let's establish some good old-fashioned trauma-based coping dynamics before we dive into the real meaty stuff, right?

I owe enormous thanks to thievinghippo on tumblr, both for being the only person I know who's finished this game who could beta for me and also (and perhaps more saliently) for providing superlative and speedy feedback. Her character work has always spectacular, and I'm so grateful she was willing to share her talents with me here. Any errors remaining are mine.

An open door says, "Come in."
A shut door says, "Who are you?"
Shadows and ghosts go through shut doors.
—Doors, Carl Sandburg

—

"Oh, damn," Astarion said, and he threw his cards atop the pile impatiently. "If you were any less—well, you, I'd accuse you of cheating."

"Tch," Lae'zel said. She placed her own cards down between them, face-up, one by one. "You overreach your stake. You challenge when you should withdraw and chase a losing stratagem for its thin thread of dramatic victory. You may have taught me this 'game,' but you do not understand it."

"Ugh." He leaned back on his hands and surveyed the spread of cards, hours-old luncheon plates, half-empty flasks, and assorted small weaponry arrayed around them at Lae'zel's tent. "No one likes a sore winner, darling."

"Do not call me that." She lifted her chin in challenge. "And I am not cheating."

"Well, I am, not that it seems to matter."

Her lip curled, but before she could respond her gaze slid somewhere past his shoulder. "Ah, the party returns." Her eyes narrowed. "With bad tidings, it seems."

Astarion glanced behind him. Indeed, he could see the group approaching through the narrow alley which led to this abandoned courtyard they had claimed while in Baldur's Gate. He could make out the lumbering bulk of Minsc, the lithe figure of Jaheira, and Shadowheart's armored silhouette, but where was—

The party emerged from the shadows of the high buildings lining the alley into open afternoon sunlight, and he realized Tavish was draped over Minsc's shoulder like a sack of potatoes. He had one excessively meaty arm wrapped around her armored thighs; Shadowheart carried both her bag and her rapier, and Astarion did not care for the expression on her face at all. They drew attention as they came in, Gale peering around the corner from his own tent, his shaving razor still in hand; Halsin and the mangy dog Tavish insisted on keeping around trotted up from the edge of the waterway. Astarion pushed to his feet, uneasy.

"What's happened?" he asked as they passed—he was proud of the lightness in his tone—but Jaheira was talking to Shadowheart very rapidly about poison and Minsc was chattering very loudly to the rodent, and none of them paid him any mind. Tavish was limp as a dishrag, her arms dangling freely down Minsc's back, her hair lank and matted with blood. He caught a glimpse of her white, slack face as they reached the roofed shelter where she'd made her camp, and whatever was left of his heart plummeted into his feet.

"What's happened?" he asked again, louder, and Shadowheart at last seemed to notice he'd followed them up the stone ramp to the rough cot Tavish had claimed as her own. Her look was piercing, and he automatically fell back into more comfortable habits. "Don't tell me you've managed to get her killed after all this time. It's too hot to get angry, darling."

"I think that's your job, isn't it? Killing her?" Shadowheart said, more edged than she'd been with Astarion in months. Minsc carefully lay Tavish down upon her bedroll, his enormous hand cupped with surprising gentleness behind her head, attention paid even to the way her arms fell against the canvas. Shadowheart turned back to kneel beside her, impatiently brushing her bangs from her eyes, and any annoyance she might have felt vanished behind a cold professionalism. "She's been poisoned. The Zhentarim were staging a coup against the Thieves' Guild. Negotiations…soured."

An understatement, it looked like, but—poisoned. Not dead. The relief took his breath away. He'd seen her dead once before, had felt her heart come to a slow, stumbling stop under his fingers, and the horror had been enough to drain the euphoria like water and send him recoiling into the night. He hadn't even liked her then. Now—well. The thought wasn't to be borne.

"So?" he asked, and he heard Lae'zel and Wyll approach behind him. "Can't you do whatever it is that you do so adroitly and…fix her?"

Jaheira looked up at him sharply from where she was removing Tavish's armor. "If she could, don't you think she would have done it by now?" She set aside Tav's leather gloves and shook her head. "I tell you, the guards were watching us as we left the city more closely than a wolf who lurks among sheep. If Shadowheart were not so stern and strong in the face, and if Minsc were less…well, Minsc, I think you would have had to look for us in the prison instead."

"Minsc is always Minsc," the man said, resting a hand as big as a ham hock on Astarion's shoulder. "Minsc has found it impossible to be anyone else."

"Remove your hand," he said through gritted teeth, still staring at Tavish's white, bruised face, "or I will remove it for you."

"What would a dead man do with three hands?" Minsc asked, mystified, and then he began to rattle off questions to the rodent and Astarion dismissed him from his attention.

Poisoned. Alive, perhaps, but now that he could see her face he did not like the look of it. She was pale, sweating; her breaths came thin and rapid, and her fingernails were blue beneath the caked dirt and blood. Shadowheart was muttering under her breath, something quick and repetitive that he thought might be a litany, though he didn't recognize the words. She came to the end of a line and magic swelled around her outstretched hands, blue and cool and healing; Tavish's body arched off the bedroll, hung bathed in that glow for a long second, then sank back again. The light receded like a dimming star. She did not move.

"What is this?" Shadowheart breathed, raking her fingers through her hair, smudging ash and blood over her cheeks. "Jaheira, do you still have the blade? Good. Let me see it. Let me—"

They fell into a discussion of poisons and symptoms he did not try to follow. Perhaps he should have forced his attention—anyone with his skillset at least dabbled in toxins—but something was roaring in his mind, some vast nameless creature of rage screaming that someone had tried to take the one good thing in his world out of it, and he hadn't even been there to protect her. He was going to kill someone. He was going to fly straight to the Guild and rip out the throat of every sorry beggar and sneakthief who'd allowed some Zhent scum to sneak up on her with a poisoned blade—

"Easy there, fangs," came a warm, familiar voice, and a different hand landed on his shoulder. The fingers squeezed, red and burning, and then Karlach leaned down into his field of view. "Come on, you keep grinding your teeth like that and you'll have none left to bite with."

This touch was not so maddening. He did not care to examine why; instead he sighed, and she squeezed again before letting him go. "Karlach, darling, if you keep this up, someone might accuse you of having a heart."

"If they saw the same look on your face I just did," she said mildly, "they might accuse you of the same thing."

He grimaced and said nothing. Wyll and Lae'zel had begun a search of Tavish's bags, looking for antidotes and antitoxins; Gale was standing at Tavish's feet now, purple wisps of Weave probing carefully at whatever force still held her unconscious. He had finished shaving, which nettled Astarion beyond reason, but his eyes were closed and his brow furrowed in deep concentration.

Karlach shifted her weight to one leg and crossed her arms. "Kills me I wasn't there," she said conversationally. "I'd like to rip the arms off whoever did this, then give them a good beating with 'em."

"Yes," he said tightly, and gave a short, sharp laugh. "To begin with, anyway."

"Right." She paused. "You know, it's been a while since I've seen you look so…"

"Vengeful?"

"Murderous."

"Much more dramatic," he said bitterly, and sighed again. "Ugh, this is awful. I much preferred it when you all would get hurt and I only wanted to laugh at you instead."

"You're such a sweetheart," Karlach said, voice wry, and then she nudged Astarion's shoulder with her own. "You know, if you wanted to go sit by her, I'm sure Shadowheart wouldn't mind."

He scoffed. "And do what, my dear? Pine? Get in the way? Fret over someone who doesn't even have the decency to not get stabbed in the back with a poisoned blade?" He waved a dismissive hand. "No, no, far better to be irascible at a distance. Safer for all involved."

"It would make you feel better," she said, unmoved by his sarcasm. "And probably her, too, if she's at all awake in there to notice."

"I am known, of course," he said acidly, "for my generous nature."

"I'll give you the benefit of the doubt," she said, and before he could stop her she seized his shoulders from behind and propelled him forward towards Tav's bedroll. "Shadowheart, let him sit in, yeah? For peace of mind. He's having kittens over here."

"For someone whose touch until very recently turned people into cinders, you've grown extremely pushy," Astarion snapped, but Shadowheart only waved him distractedly towards the head of the makeshift bed. He tried once more. "I'm sure I'll only be a bother. This looks…complicated."

"I don't care what you do, so long as you're quiet," Shadowheart said, not looking up from the blade Jaheira had wrapped in green vines made of light. "Yes, I see what you mean. The drow poison is the base, but then why wouldn't divine magic work? It's never failed before. We've dealt with this poison a hundred times. She cut herself with it last week."

"Perhaps it is the mixture of the two. The proportions, the interactions, changing it into something new." Jaheira's eyes were lit green as her vines. "Something within the heart of it."

"Yes," said Gale, turning to face them with his own eyes gleaming purple. Thin strands of raw Weave strung themselves from his fingertips to Tavish's forehead, heart, and stomach. "There's something there. I don't know what it is."

They were no longer paying him any attention. Even Karlach had gone with Wyll and Halsin to begin supper preparations; Lae'zel knelt at her tent once more, eyes closed in silent meditation. The dog had stayed, laid close at hand with his nose between his paws, and the tatty ginger cat had come to sit in a tight loaf beside him, green eyes huge and unblinking. He could leave. No one was watching. He could escape cleanly and come back when it was all over, when she was awake again and annoyed at all the fuss. It would be so easy to go.

He sat gingerly on the crumbling stone wall beside her head.

This portion of the wall was lower than the rest, the ancient mortar giving way to the shelf of dirt and root behind it. She preferred sleeping with her back to something solid—less avenues for ambush, she'd told him once—but he thought she'd grown to like the trees and earth for all she'd once complained about them. A city girl through and through, she'd said, right up until he'd caught her idly drawing constellations and weedy riverbanks on a scrap of parchment. She had been embarrassed; he had been charmed, though it had taken longer to admit it.

He supposed this was what partners did, after all. Lovers who were equals, who had each told the other they were loved and believed the answer in return. They sat beside each other when they were ill and fretted impotently and waited for the healer to announce all would be well. That he could hear said healer cursing at Gale did little to assuage, however, and he had to force the confidence into the sentiment with some effort.

Her face was so pale. He could not look away from it. Her freckles stood out like ink in the contrast, her closed eyes unmoving, a glorious bruise beginning to blossom on her left cheekbone. Her hands, always mobile, dancing as she spoke, were limp and still. The majority of her armor was intact—Jaheira had managed to pull most of it off and it lay in a neat pile beside her—but a deep slash in the leather along the ribs marked the place where the poisoned blade had snuck past her defenses. The matching wound on her side was shallow, her undershirt pushed up to bare it to Shadowheart's scrutiny, but the edges were a livid, sickly green, and little rootlings of that same green had begun to spindle and stretch along her skin up towards her heart.

Carefully, he reached out and put two fingers on her throat. Necessity had made him exceptionally skilled at finding pulse-points in a wide variety of blood-filled creatures, and hers were more familiar than most, but it took longer than usual to locate, and he winced again when he found it. Her blood was running fast, her heart struggling and skipping and too quick; the beats were rapid and shallow as her breathing, and he had enough understanding of living hearts to know hers would not last overlong at this pace. Gentleness still did not come easily to him, but he let the backs of his fingers slide over her cheek, along the matted blood at her hairline. A handful of long strands had caught along her eyelashes, her chapped lips; he restored them to their fellows with more care than needed, then let his hand drop.

I do love you, Astarion. Isn't that the stupidest thing you've ever heard?

A light rain began to fall. Not enough to really soak; just enough he could hear Karlach's skin spitting and hissing at the patter as she came up to the covered balcony, said something to Jaheira, and went down again to the waterside. Just enough the ginger cat uncurled itself, moved restlessly to the other side of the dog Scratch, and curled up again on a less damp patch of stone. The sun had slid lower in the sky without his noticing; the shadows stretched long and orange around them. Some smell began to drift faintly through the air as supper roasted, something metallic and rotten. Lae'zel was not a good cook, but Wyll was, and it was disappointing he'd apparently allowed—

Wait.

Astarion narrowed his eyes, then shut them altogether. Not a smell from the firepit—it was from Tavish. From her wound, from the gouge which seeped green-tinged blood even now, hours after the initial injury. How had he not smelled it before? (Because he had kept himself at a remove. Because he did not understand yet how to stay. Because—)

"Do excuse me," he said instead, and reached beneath Shadowheart's glowing hands to dip the tip of his longest finger into Tav's open wound. He brought his fingertip to his mouth delicately, and both Shadowheart and Gale made identical noises of disgust.

"Astarion, please."

"Really? You couldn't have waited until a better time? Any other time?"

"Her blood is cursed," he said, and the shock which flashed across their faces would have been comical—and immensely satisfying—anywhere else. Instead he was only seriously annoyed. "Can't you smell it? It's as rotten as those fish washing up on the wharf. It positively reeks of a curse." He resisted, nobly, the urge to spit.

"I can't feel it," Shadowheart said. Her brow was furrowed, not as if she did not believe him, but as if she could not quite see how two pieces of armor could fit together. "I'm trying to, but I don't—" She shut her eyes, pulled off her gloves, and set her bare hands on either side of Tavish's injury. "It's…so faint," she said at last, and her eyes fluttered open. "How could you sense that? That little thing—among all the rest?"

"How does one find a spider in a nosegay?" he asked, not bothering to disguise the sneer. "One shoves one's face in it and lets it bite."

"You are insufferable," Shadowheart grumbled, but the edge was gone from her voice. Now there was hope instead, and she spread her fingers to frame the long gash over Tav's ribs. A new gleam spread around her hands, something cool and blue and simple, and then Shadowheart spoke a word. The magic leapt from her fingers to light the wound end to end in one brilliant blue flash, then went out.

Astarion, blinking afterimages from his eyes, could not tell at first if it had worked. Then he realized the slash had lost all trace of green, that the color had returned to her skin: hale, hearty, flushed with sun. The injury still bled, but the blood was red now, the right color, the right smell. There was no poison. There was no thin spindling rootwork reaching for her heart. His fingers flew to the pulse at her throat—steady, strong, the beats even and paired as they should be, the horrible shallow racing wholly vanished. The relief made him lightheaded. Even the smell of her blood, untainted by that metallic rot, could not shake him.

"Good," Shadowheart said, her own relief undisguised, and the blue shifted back into the familiar healing hue. The edges of Tav's skin began to draw closed; muscle reknit with sinew and grew whole. They were quiet together for several minutes in that blue light; then Shadowheart sat back on her heels, let the glow die, and wiped her brow. "That'll have to do. I need to rest, and I want to check it again first thing in the morning before I seal it up. There's so much magic in it right now, I can hardly see what I'm doing."

"A wise decision," Jaheira said from where she'd been sitting quietly at Tavish's feet, but her eyes were on Astarion. "And a good job, all of you. Now, go eat. I can hear that great bear Halsin coming for the pot, and if you wait any longer there will be nothing left for you to enjoy. So long as you promise to save me a bowl, I will look after this one in the meantime."

Gale began to protest, but Shadowheart glanced briefly between Astarion, Jaheira, and the sleeping Tavish, then shook her head. She took Gale by the wrist and tugged him after her, away down the stone ramp towards the loose circle of the others around the firepit. Astarion heard her say something, heard the others give a cheer. The rain, light as it had been, slowed, then stopped altogether.

He could feel Jaheira glancing at the side of his face as she wrapped a fresh bandage over the wound. It was not pleasant to be the object of such scrutiny, but neither was he willing to pick an argument while he felt so raw, so he was forced to settle for defiant silence. He checked Tavish's heartbeat again after a minute or two, just to be sure—still strong as ever—and then, with some belligerence, aware of Jaheira's presence, he leaned down and kissed her roughly on the cheek. "Wake up," he said, loud enough for Jaheria to hear him. "You know how difficult it is for me to tolerate the company you keep. They simply can't be kept in line without you."

Jaheira let out a quiet, warm laugh. He bristled, but her voice was kind. "You worry too much what others think of you, little vampling. Oh, I confess I too wondered at first what she saw in you—I am sure we all did—but now it is clear enough even to the most blind. I suggest you take the peace where you can find it." She pushed to her feet, put both hands to the small of her back and stretched. "I am going to go sit over there, on the other side of the terrace, and I am going to very deliberately not look back this way anytime soon." She smiled. "Take heart. It is a natural sleep now, healthy and restorative. The danger has passed."

The words of a healer, bringing comfort to those who waited anxiously for their loved ones to wake. He could not look her in the eye. "I see. I…thank you."

She waved the words away, went to perch on the balustrade where it overlooked the courtyard. Karlach called up to her, something warm and joyful; Jaheira answered in kind, and then Astarion let their voices fade to a background hum.

The gestures came easier now. He slid closer to Tav on the stone wall, took her hand in his, felt for the heartbeat in her wrist, found it strong and checked again anyway. He pressed the back of her hand to his cheek, was pleased to feel it warm as ever; then, embarrassed by his own sentimentality, he set down her hand and pouted. "This is very inconsiderate of you, you know," he said to her unmoving face. "Everyone's making such a fuss about you and you don't even have the courtesy to be awake for it."

Dried blood still clung to the bridge of her nose, to her cheek. It stank of the curse, even after Shadowheart's magic. Astarion hesitated, then wetted one of the spare bandages from the flask of water at his hip and set about cleaning her face. When that was done he moved to her hair, untying the leather thong that bound the long tail at her neck, breaking apart what bloody mats he could with his fingers, fishing out his little ivory comb when that no longer sufficed. He knew she was quietly vain about her hair—he was exceedingly familiar with that sort of conceit, though she had the benefit of being able to see her artful twists in the mirror—and when he was done he arranged the thick auburn fall of it over one shoulder, where it would not tangle if she roused. When she roused.

Only a matter of time, he thought, and that, he had in abundance.

—

He was leaned back against the stone wall, dozing lightly, when her fingers twitched in his loose grip. At first he could not remember why this mattered; then the events of the afternoon came back in a rush, and he jolted awake. The sun had gone down; the sky was dark, the stars choked out by city torches, and the warm orange blaze of the camp's firepit in the yard below them glowed in welcoming contrast through the gaps in the stone. Jaheira was little more than a silhouette upon the balustrade, her edges blurred and shifting—he reached up to rub his eyes—

"Astarion?" Tavish said.

He slid with utter gracelessness to his knees beside the bedroll. Her eyes were open. She was looking at him, her eyes open, though they were unfocused and weary and lined with pain. Her fingers had tightened around his own; there was no strength to the grip. "You look," he said sincerely, "absolutely awful."

"Flatterer," she said, and caught her breath. "Where am I?"

"Camp. Jaheira and Shadowheart and that great big rock who pretends to be a person brought you back this afternoon."

"It hurts."

"Being stabbed does that, I'm told," he snapped, but he regretted the venom when she only squeezed his hand. "That is…ugh. You've made this all so wretched."

"What happened with the Zhentarim?"

"Routed. No thanks to you."

She laughed, gasped at the pain, and clutched at her side with her free hand. "Must have been a bloody one for Shadowheart to have left it unfinished."

"You have no idea," he said, but when the agony passed she brought their joined hands hesitantly to her mouth and kissed his knuckles, and all at once he could find no room for the temper. "You worried me," he said instead, and found in that admission a new pain of his own. He had thought himself well-acquainted with every type of suffering; this was unfamiliar, and not entirely unwelcome, and he did not understand it.

"Come now," she said, and smiled, and gods, he'd missed that smile. "You of all people should know I'm not so easy to kill."

"I of all people know exactly how easy you are to kill," he said sharply, and then he leaned down and kissed her. Her mouth was warm, familiar; she moved like any living woman beneath him, though there was a tenderness to it that was still novel, and her fingers slid to rest lightly on his neck. He sighed when it was over, and against her mouth he murmured, "Don't do that again. I didn't care for it at all."

"You know very well how worthless that promise would be," she told him, and she kissed him again. He drew back afterwards to look at her; the reflections of firelight danced in her eyes. "I'm sorry I frightened you."

"I was hardly frightened," he scoffed, and she smiled, and he saw she would let him have the lie. The protest caught in his throat; he swallowed and said, "I suppose…it was frightening, to see you like that. To not know if you would come back to me."

"I will always come back to you," she said fiercely, as she always did when saying things that shook him to his core, and then she clutched her side again, which only slightly undercut the sentiment. "Ouch."

He covered her hand with his. "Idiot."

"Peacock."

He laughed and tangled their fingers together. Her thumb ran alongside his thumb; then she added after a little silence, "I'll try not to, though."

"Hm?"

"Frighten you again."

Were they still talking about this? "My dear, in our line of work it can hardly be avoided. I will simply have to learn to fight through it, just as you have for me. I assume, after all, you did not particularly enjoy seeing me tethered and doomed by Cazador's little ritual."

Each syllable clipped, Tavish said, "I did not."

"And yet you managed to cut through your foes ever-so-gallantly to reach my side," he said, ignoring the sudden rush of warmth in his chest. The surge of hate at his master's name had come more faintly than usual, as if even that anger could not pierce the little sanctuary this shadowed terrace had become. "Rest assured I will do the same."

"Words are cheap," she said, and that was certainly true, but she looked like she believed him regardless. She shifted with restless discomfort on the bedroll—he allowed it with steadfast silence, though he winced when she caught her breath at the pain—and then she settled again on her good side, facing him, one of his hands tucked up in both of hers by her cheek.

Something was trapped on her tongue; he could see the words bursting to be free. "What is it?"

"I still find it difficult to believe," she said at last, and her voice was quiet. He had to lean closer to hear her. "This. Us. Like you, I know very well how to make myself useful." This was dangerous territory, Astarion thought suddenly, treading very near the great pitfalls they had both politely avoided at the start of this—whatever it was. "I know how to protect what's mine. But the rest…" She turned her head and kissed his fingers. "I care so much for you that I'm afraid I'm going to hold onto you too tightly. That I might—that I might be ruining this at every step."

"Well, I'm hardly any better," he said, a little annoyed. "For two hundred years I marinated in hate and suffering. Now, in a span of months, you have become the one thing I can't bear to live without. Trust me, the wrench in priorities is staggering."

"You'll make a girl blush," she retorted, but her eyes fell away, and he saw the color rise to her freckled cheeks regardless. "I do…" she added after a moment, more haltingly, "like that thought, though. The idea of being…a priority. For you."

This was edging perilously sincere for both of them. It would be easier to lean away, to take refuge in the mutual recognition of artifice that had drawn them together in the first place. He kissed her instead, long and slow and gentle as he knew how to make it. "I love you," he said quietly, afterwards, and felt her shiver, the same as he always did when she said those words to him. "There is nothing more important to me, darling, than to see you safe. That's the truth. You'll have to learn how to live with it."

"Yes," she said, and then she drew clumsy arms around his neck and tugged him down into an embrace. He let himself be pulled, buried his face in the crook of her shoulder as his fingers found her hair, and for once there was no hunger at all for anything more. Just the simple, satisfying comfort of finding peace in a lover's arms. The terrace was quiet around them in the starlight, only the distant hum of conversation around the fire, only the faint noise of the city beyond the walls. He breathed in the smell of her and shut his eyes.

"Astarion, are you hungry? I brought you a chicken to drink, since—Astarion!"

Shadowheart's voice was outraged. He looked up to see her glaring at him like the sun, both fists on her hips, one hand still gripping the feet of an irate chicken squawking upside-down.

"What?" he said, bewildered, and then realized what she must have seen. "I assure you, my dear, this little display of affection was entirely innocent."

"You don't even know the meaning of the word," she countered, and she thrust the chicken into his chest as she came to kneel on the opposite side of the bedroll. To Tavish she said, much more kindly, "Are you awake? How are you feeling?"

"Fine, fine," Tav said, but she was laughing, and as Astarion grappled with the protesting chicken the cat leapt up to the emptied place at Tavish's shoulder and began kneading her shirt, purring gently. Shadowheart was bustling officiously now, and here came Karlach with an enormous bowl of broth, and Wyll and Gale just behind, looking relieved as they displaced Astarion from the erstwhile bedside. Astarion yielded them the space without complaint—the chicken was furious and he had to pin it beneath an arm to quell the clucks—then found his way out of the chaos to a clear spot at the balustrade. He leaned back against it, caught his breath, and smiled.

"Things could be worse, at least," he said, mostly to himself, then added to the chicken, "and will be for you, my feathered friend, in about a quarter-hour."

A soft chuckle sounded near him, and he looked over with some surprise to see Jaheira still perched in the shadows on the balustrade. The warm glow from the fire lit the near half of her face, snared itself in her curling smile. "She is well, I take it."

"Yes," he said cautiously. "As well as anybody ever is with a big gaping cut in their side, I suppose."

"It is a good thing," she said, and she stretched and uncoiled from the rail like a panther. Then she came to stand before him, shorter even than Tav, short enough to fit easily under his arm, and he felt in that moment if he tried to lift her it would be like lifting the roots of the earth. "It is a good thing," she said again, and her eyes crinkled as she smiled, "that she has you. That you have her."

He said, "Yes."

"Enjoy your bird, little vampling," Jaheira said, eyes gleaming in the dark, and she went down to join the others where they still sat around the campfire. Astarion watched her go, and then he looked back to where Tav lay with the ginger cat now curled on her chest, laughing at something Gale was saying, shaking her head as Wyll teased her, thanking Shadowheart for her care. For a moment her eyes caught his through the glad conversation surrounding her; her smile grew shy and fond, and when he smiled back, she winked. A simple, silly little thing. He adored it. He adored her, even when she failed to avoid the bite of a cursed, poisoned blade, even when she—quite inconsiderately—drove him mad with worry.

She had made him weak and strong at once. How else to explain the fear—the bone-trembling panic—at her face gone so white and still? How else to explain the ecstatic rush in battle when he felt a touch on his back and knew she stood there, unshakable, in his defense? Six months ago the idea of wasting away beside a lover's sickbed would have made him laugh with derision. Six months ago he could not have conceived of a world where Cazador was dead, where he walked free beside a woman who loved him and wished to hold his hand for nothing more than the comfort of it. What new horizons might spread before them both in another six months? In a year? Perhaps—longer?

How terrible. How wonderful. A curse he had no desire to lift. He watched the dog lick Tav's face in great slobbery stripes and was appalled to feel only a towering affection at the sight.

"Truly, love is the strongest poison of all," Astarion said with great resignation to the chicken, who in answer pecked him in the hand and squawked.

—

end.

AN: This was one of the funniest bugs in my game and I'm so sad I didn't record it. Every time Shadowheart tried to clear the (alas, uncursed) poison, my Tav would stand up in a graceful swirl, then swirl right back down again, even through area changes. I had to long rest to clear it.