Her head pounded.
Her entire body ached.
And there was a sting at the base of her neck that felt… amazing.
She embraced the sensation, the burning pleasure that surrounded it, enjoying the pain that invaded it and confirmed, thankfully, that she was still alive, that her magic remained with her, that she was in the undercrofts of Menzoberranzan no longer. Not so long ago she would have dreaded the moment she had to open her eyes and surrender to reality another day. Lately, reality was far kinder to her than her nightmares, than her memories. She was free, far out of reach of the goddess that taught her that no one, not even a god, was more important than oneself. The goddess who thought fit to throw a child under a test of fire and that, when she came out victorious, burned her wings day after day until time had no meaning, until the embers that she had been hiding blazed and the storm that no one except her knew existed violently destroyed everything and everyone on her way.
She remembered vividly why it was that the nightmares threatened her peace last night, why she desperately needed to not be alone, and how she kept her mind entertained so as to not think about her conversation with Minthara. And she would be a big fucking liar if she said it didn't work perfectly.
She slowly opened her eyes, the thumping at the back of her mind relentless, when she heard the rustle of the fallen leaves followed shortly by the splash of water. There he was, bathed in the morning sun, the scars that she traced last night as if they were a lifeline as striking as she remembered. She pushed herself up just enough to look at him better and he seemed to realize her presence because his eyes collided with hers from over his shoulder. He really was beautiful, capable of stealing her breath with a simple look — talented to do oh-so-much more. Part of her wanted to forget about the tadpole, Moonrise Towers, Minthara, the Absolute and soulless bastard Nere Dorshen. She wished to walk towards her vampire companion, her hands traveling down the muscles of his arms, and drag him towards the grass time and time again, until the rage she felt disappeared — until she could be totally free anew.
"Are you not going to ask?"
His voice sounded rusty and dry — she didn't think he'd have talked much since last night. He looked out front and she lost the crimson that turned her insides backwards, the feeling of loss all too familiar to her.
"We all have scars, of all shapes and sizes, some deeper than others, some not so visible. We each have our reasons to hide or to share what caused them. When — if — someday you want to tell me, you'll do it. I have no right to ask before that."
She stood while talking, stretching a bit each of her main muscles, and surpassed the stunned vampire to reach the area of the water that covered below her stomach. It was colder than last night yet equally pleasant, subduing the pressure that squeezed her brain the instant her wet hands reached her face. She was grateful for the relief, her body rejecting and embracing the sudden change of temperature, practically jumping under the colder touch of Astarion before welcoming his hand on her waist, his fingers down her neck. It brought back all kinds of thrills, her body ready to dive into the abyss, the anticipation of something that wasn't quite happening blurring the rest of her thoughts. He had been silent after her answer and she wondered if she had said something wrong, if he wanted her to ask. She wanted to, her curiosity getting the better of her, yet she understood what it meant to share something like that. She just didn't want him to tell her because he felt pressured to, the last thing on her mind was to force anyone to do anyth — Her trail of thought disappeared when his touch reached the open wound he himself inflicted and applied the most wonderful of pressures on it, the pain and ecstasy lingering subtly under her skin.
Would it scar? She couldn't help but wonder, murmuring her question to the air without realizing it. She was amazed it was still there, hours after. Based on what she knew about vampires — a common, or at least commoner, race in the Underdark due to the absence of light — their bites usually left no trace unless they were actively trying. She searched the blood-tinged eyes that admired her new mark and prayed that it would. This was her body and she would sully it however she desired. She only regretted that there weren't more, that for all her fighting since before the kidnapping, she had only received a couple subtle scars here and there, a tadpole that threatened to make her something other than herself, a burning brand in her hand she refused to heal because she needed it to hurt, and now a vampire bite. At least she'll have a clear winner between them if it were a competition in place of a collection.
"Don't worry, it will only scar if you leave it untreated. We wouldn't want to tarnish your beautiful skin, won't we?"
She wanted to explain that yes, precisely that was one of the things she looked for, day after day. She was sick of her pristine skin, sick that none of the things she endured for years had left a mark, sick that if someone asked for proof about her story, about her entire life, there was none. And what little remained were people who didn't deserve it, people who would hide the truth if anyone other than her asked. Sometimes she had to wonder if she really existed. The feeling of having it there, even if she hadn't seen it yet, was something pleasant, something that screamed that this night was real, that there was someone out there who had experienced something new because she was still in the world. It was her mark and she would not renounce it so easily. Of course, she couldn't simply throw that at him, so she decided the best course of action was to playfully tease him.
"So I just have to do nothing for it to remain there? Noted."
She smirked after seeing his surprised expression, something on it confessing to her that he didn't think she would want to keep it but that he was pleased to hear it, maybe a bit smug about her decision too. Taking advantage of the moment to grab his wrists she used most of her strength and the absence of it from her distracted companion to let themselves fall back first into the water. She emerged a moment after floating in deeper waters, her feet tiptoeing to find the ground under them, an annoyed Astarion shaking his head to remove his hair from his eyes. Unlike her, he was standing, half his left upper arm still submerged, his other arm brushing back his hair. And she laughed softly at his expression, a mix of annoyance and playfulness that followed the light reflected on the water until it reached her.
"Now that's a good way to start the day, you see?"
After a moment she didn't see coming she was firm, stable, a couple of arms lifting her in place, cold yet soft lips finding hers and her fingers interlaced with white dampened hair. She let everything go. Her fear, her anger, her indecision, the lack of self-confidence she masked day after day. Everything. For a couple of seconds, it was just her being accepted as part of the world.
"Please"
She muttered, her voice coming short between short kisses, the exact nature of what she was pleading for unimportant at the moment.
"If you want a better way…"
She thought she heard Astarion offering before her tongue succumbed to his and
she didn't even need to nod, she didn't want to waste air replying to it when it was something they so clearly hungered for. She could feel him so close to her, so hard and ready for her, because of her, it would be so easy—
The sound blared through the sky, black fireworks — if she had to call them something — concentrated exclusively on top of the small clear and the forest that surrounded it. They jolted away, irritated at the interruption and amused at the method of it. If it weren't for her recognising the magic that created such a distraction, she would have thought they were under attack. Instead, she clicked her tongue and stretched one last time, grateful that the sudden shock hadn't made Astarion drop her without warning. It was better this way, she forced herself to believe. As much as she wanted to put it off they had things to do.
"I'm going to kill that fucking wizard."
She added playfully, making him chuckle while he released her closer to shore, the rumble of it caressing her own chest. He had no right to be even more sexier while drenched, the ends of his hair clinging to the sides of his face, to the start of his neck. She lusted to bite him again. She very seriously needed to stop looking at him unclothed and wet in front of her.
"Now now, we may have need of him yet. What if Mystra comes knocking asking for her lost toy? I would rather avoid having to tell her what and why it happened to him."
Charmed by his reason not to kill Gale, she gathered enough willpower to search for, reach and wear her golden underwear. Not that it mattered to her who saw her naked but maybe the rest of the group would appreciate a little decency, as they say. At least it was clean and dry since she wore it for the first time last night. It had been a gift from someone she no longer remembers, in exchange for the same thing everyone wanted from her. She wondered if she could still consider any of her things gifts, knowing that each one of them had been paid for, one form or another.
She moved towards the common part of their camp, leaving Astarion behind searching for his clothes, and reached her traveller's chest first. She fumbled between everything they threw at the box without any consideration to find her black tunic and her silver tiara before considering that the camp seemed surprisingly quiet. She stood without making a movement for a couple of seconds before a female voice reached her.
"No. No. If we are trying to infiltrate the cult we should reach the Underdark as soon as possible. Nere will be expecting us."
She froze, her hands gripping the border of the chest until her nails dug into the wood. It seemed Minthara was eager to leave this morning and couldn't wait to give orders to her group. To her companions. She guessed it was equally her fault for having a late awakening. Maybe it was equally her fault for rejecting her last night, she wasn't sure which would matter most for the other drow. She just knew that she wouldn't — couldn't — share such kind of intimacy with someone affiliated with fucking Nere Dorshen, it made no difference that she would use every asset available to her. Even she had her limits.
"Chk! We are near the Mountain Pass, we have spoken to Kith'rak Voss, we know there's a Githyanki Creche right around the corner and you want to 'come back later'? We won't have later if we turn into ghaik while finding this Nere."
It was Gale who approached her in the middle of her little crisis, startling her enough to snap her out of it. If he saw part of her reaction, he was kind enough not to mention it.
"They've been at it for quite some time, I was starting to lose my nerve about it."
She shook her head, sliding her tunic down the rest of her body, appreciating the soft texture of the fabric against her skin and moved in front of one of their mirrors, the ribbon she used to tie her hair caught between her teeth while her hands brushed and modelled her locks into her usual bun.
"And our guests?"
It was their usual routine. She would pace around camp finishing little tasks, taking a chunk of bread for breakfast, strategising about the best course of action for the day, and he would follow her, offering his insight, counsel, and any kind of news about their companions she could have missed. She didn't even think about it and they simply went with the flow, but last night they didn't leave the conversation in a pleasant status, to say the least. She looked at him, wondering what he was thinking, and found his eyes fixed on the early part of her neck, where she could still feel Astarion's fangs piercing her greyish skin. The intensity of his stare stopped moments after, their gazes clashing, the conversation resuming as if neither of them noticed the small pause.
"As you can most probably see, they're gone. They left early this morning, informing us of an interesting connection of the cult in the Underdark."
Once she had finished doing her hair, he handed her the list of provisions, pointing that he had already marked everything that was expended last night and counted everything again in case the goblin's hands found something where they shouldn't.
"We could have done it now, there was no need to rush. Did you at least try to sleep something?"
Her eyes scanned the paper, seeing a lot more red crosses than she would have liked but at least it was everything that they offered. The rest of the things were still there, Scratch included. She searched for him for a second until she found him whimpering to the other women, possibly trying to stop them from escalating their differences in opinions once more.
"Did you try to be quiet?"
Her glare snapped to him suddenly, defensive. She felt attacked, the tone of his voice reminiscent of that of last night, but she couldn't be the one to retaliate. She needed him to see she wasn't a threat, she wished that he could trust her a bit. At best, she wanted him to trust her as he trusted when he brought her hand to his chest and told her about his Netheresse Orb. She knew not to push her luck, not to ask for more.
"Didn't realise we would bother anyone. Next time, I'll think about trying."
She moved away, ready to talk to the rest about how they were not going to the Underdark at the moment when she had to stop in place, her wrist strongly kept in place, their magics clashing with enough force to destabilize her for a quarter of a second. She questioned if it was because of the orb or if it simply was, but their wizard was not a common wizard. His power rivaled hers, an endless competition that took part every dammed time they were this close. Every dammed time that his sweet chestnut eyes would drift to her lips and time would slow itself.
"As if you'd think at all."
She broke his grip violently, growing more and more irritated, listening as more than one couple of feet walked towards their direction. She knew she had imagined the softness in his expression because it was the same as it had been before the attack on the grove — his trust, if she ever truly had any, another one of the things to add to her long list of losses — yet she also knew that their clashes were almost destined, their magics fighting and fusing, always trying to make the other rise even higher, to arouse each other. The worst part she concluded about it was that her magic felt incomplete after touching his, it needed to join him as soon as possible so as to not run dry and she abhorred such a sensation almost as much as she couldn't escape it. Like a fire angry at the logs that keep it burning. But her magic was hers alone and the fact that he could so easily snatch it away terrified her — even if it never really left her, even if it was only a feeling.
"Thankfully I chose a partner who stopped me from doing so."
The others had approached a couple of meters but listening to the tone of their conversation looked curiously at each other, confused and amused by the two people who usually had everything under control. She breathed after spitting the words at him, regaining a bit of her composure just to lose it again immediately.
"Now, don't blame your lack of sleep on me — or make me the cause."
She told him he could blame what happened to her. But she was referring to the raid, to the Grove, to the tadpole even if it made him feel better. But she won't stand to be treated worse for something that she certainly didn't cause. She knew she was noisy when enjoying herself, it made her feel less like a doll. She knew how to be subtle and silent when she wanted, when such a need arose, but it wasn't the case. The party continued long after they left, they were pretty far away without risking alerting or attracting any more enemies and he could have conjured an isolation spell if it really bothered him. Judging by how he reacted to her words, moving close enough that she could breathe the air he expelled, his teeth clenching, she was pretty convinced of the real reason her mind proposed. She felt it too.
"T'chaki, that's enough. If we don't start our way right now night will come again before you two are over."
Lae'zel's impatience got the best of her and she won two pairs of eyes fixed on her, grateful and irritated on equal terms. She was really not sure where they were going with any of this.
"Oh, why did you have to interrupt? Just when it was starting to get interesting."
Astarion would have been fine with bloodshed between them, she knew him good enough to know that. She would prefer not to kill their only wizard, not someone she had grown to… appreciate, but at the moment she would have been fine with bloodshed too. It enervated her that she was incapable of staying calm when Gale provoked her, no matter how little.
"We were discussing whether we should follow the Mountain Pass since we are already close, or if we should give more priority to what Minthara said and rendezvous with Nere in the Underdark."
She could still hear Shadowheart's words, but she wasn't really listening to them. With all their discussion she forgot about Nere. There was little she wished for more than lying to everyone about Nere and simply… ignoring him. He evaded her wrath once already and she had made peace with the fact. She hated to admit that she could be afraid of something, hated to feel so weak again, so out of control. But she feared Nere. She feared her own reaction to him. She feared losing the respect of her companions if they saw a fragment of what she had been.
"We're advancing through the Mountain Pass."
The black-haired girl seemed a bit taken aback, as if she was just suddenly interrupted. She probably was, Stengah had no idea of what was happening around her, she just wanted to stall the conversation.
"But we have infiltrated the cult of the Absolute for this. This was our purpose in the first place."
Yes, she wanted to say, before anyone told me the families involved in it. She bit her lip absentmindedly and repeated, more conviction seeping into her words this time.
"We are advancing through the Mountain Pass, Nere can fucking wait. I promised Lae'zel we'll try to convince the Githyanki to help us and that's exactly what we're going to do."
She made them follow to her map, conveniently layered on top of a makeshift wooden table, and started explaining their next steps.
"For what the dragon rider told us, the Creche must be somewhere around here. We will make camp here, to the left. Find the creche, ask if they can do something about our tadpoles. Yes? Amazing, we can all go back to our lives and neither of you'll have to look at me again. No? Then, and only then, we'll find Nere."
The rest of them dispersed, Shadowheart murmuring her disapproval while Lae'zel nodded, no doubt making her own plans for her reunion with her people. Each of them, be it wizard or skeleton, landed a helping hand against the multiple things they had to pack for their journey. Thinking herself alone, she crumbled the map in her hand mentally repeating her last words, her fist clenching it until she could feel the lighting at her fingertips. A pale hand joined hers, startling her owner back to the present.
"Careful dear, you could bring down the entire camp if you don't control yourself."
Her fist relaxed under his touch and she left the map alone for the moment. He was right, of course he was. Between Nere and Gale, their travelling companions at each other throats, her utter hopelessness about the journey they were about to embark on… She felt as if he was the only good thing she could enjoy lately. The only one who judged everyone except her. She knew she was being delusional, still blessed by his mastery in other fields, still thankful that he didn't leave her alone when he could have. She was being judged by each and all of them, every step of the way. Yet she felt she could be closer to her true self at his side anyway. She linked her hand with Astarion's just long enough to nod at him, to confide without words that she had listened, that she would follow his advice.
A couple hours after — already well into the afternoon — they were halfway to the creche, their new camp being set up by Withers and Shadowheart while the rest investigated, their objective almost in sight. It was then, walking through mud, earth and bushes, that she started to feel the magic. All her survival instinct kicked in, her gaze searching for that of the wizard and finding it equally startled, searching on her eyes an answer for a question he didn't dare ask, a hint of recognition shining on them when they reached the figure that birdwatched a couple meters away.
"Elminster?"
