The woodlands were lovely. She concentrated on the nature surrounding her. The wind through the trees; the rustle of the bushes they passed by; the tinkling of the nearby stream as it wove its way over shallow rocks. Sounds of birds & the quiet chatter drifting back to her from the people in front. There was something about grounding oneself to help calm a pissed off disposition. All she needed was some Zen spa salon tunes on Spotify & she'd be right as rain.
Having shade thrown at you by a god was … humiliating. Not that she considered Withers a god as such. Very powerful ancient insect creature, yes. God, no.
But the mummy man had made it plain that he knew about her. Quite a bit, too, going on his scathing comments of her inability to keep secrets. She knew how to keep secrets, damn it! It was the oversharing the desiccated dickhead was referring to & it made her mad. She hadn't come all the way to Faerun (actually, she hadn't chosen to come here at all, because, if she'd had a choice in fantasy destinations, this certainly wouldn't be it) just to be met with obnoxious attitudes surrounding her behaviour.
Belle just wanted to help. Even durge. Needed to, now that she shared their dilemma. She wasn't an idiot; she knew you couldn't just show up & state to random people you've just met that you could help them because you knew everything; not just about all the shenanigans going on surrounding the tadpoles, but all about the individual's deepest darkest secrets & fears? Of which none of them had confronted themselves yet? Puh-leese. They'd think her a raving lunatic & throw her in the nearest chasm.
It was why she wasn't treating Astarion like he belonged in bubble-wrap. She took him as she found him, ignoring all the things she shouldn't know about him but did. A lot of Astarion's growth took place from his own realisations. She knew damn well why Jergal had stopped her from saying anything to Brian. To treat her at face value was just a plain old insult.
Throwing a glance behind her at the floating Withers, she found him watching her intently. Narrowing her eyes at him, she turned back around, intent on ignoring him for the foreseeable future. She heaved a sigh of relief that sounded more like a groan when Gus called time for a break, not so much as sitting on the ground as collapsing. She wasn't in terrible shape, had managed to keep fit to a degree through the years, but this was more walking than she'd done in the last month. Man, the map didn't show the scale of these places.
She was hungry, but with only trail rations on offer she didn't want her mouth puckering up at the amount of salt used to cure jerky here. Her fault: she hadn't been able to find any decent fruit for sale back at the grove. And as meticulous as she'd been in game of rummaging through every crate & barrel to score a mountain of camp rations, in real life she felt bad about randomly going through someone's possessions. Like, what was the go? Did all those random crates & such belong to people nearby? If so, why were they just stacked there with no one guarding them? It was hard to distinguish between unowned crates & crates that belonged to someone. There was no red highlighter to guide her here to show her if she was stealing or not & she felt a bit stupid for asking, even her dad.
"Roll out" she heard Gus call.
"Whyyyy meeee?" she whined, hauling herself to her feet & stumbling off again, feeling like she was on the set of Survivor: Faerun.
Not having had a watch or mobile on her when abducted, Belle was having to estimate the time. The others seemed to be quite lax, relying on 'dawn, midday, afternoon' etc. She was used to precise time. She wanted to know when it was 9:45 or 12:15, both a.m. & p.m. She heavily estimated it to be around five-ish in the afternoon when they reached grove side of the bridge that led across to the abandoned village of Moonhaven, seen distantly through trees on the horizon. She peered at the far end of the bridge, but there didn't appear to be any Aradin or his team there just milling about, waiting for her party to get near them before triggering the cut scene.
The party flew into action, everyone setting up their little tents around the makeshift fire, just left of the bridge. Gus had taken up a permanent position to her right, Astarion to her left, the others in the same order as that first night, except Brian, who had taken up a position after Gus's tent. She wasn't sure she wanted durge that close to her. Sure, he seemed nice enough, now, but this was the dude that found love with cadavers & feasted on dead flesh, sooo…
It was nice, sorta, to be falling into a domestic routine with Gale, prepping & cooking dinner beside him & dishing it out & cleaning up after. It felt normal. Grounding. Gave her opportunity to get to know him. Gave Gale an opportunity to get to know her. She got the feeling Gale was scared of her. She wasn't giving out Minthara vibes, was she?
Wyll collected her straight after dinner, once again going through her stances. He didn't add anything to it, saying she needed to get this bit right first before the hacking & the stabbing could occur. She was sweating by the end of it, her muscles trembling just from standing upright. She desperately wanted a hot shower. Or a bath. The idea of sudsing off again in the nearby stream just wasn't as appealing tonight. Especially after inadvertently giving Astarion another eyeful the night before. She knew perfectly well he hadn't gone out of his way to catch her nude, but he had gone out of his way to rub it in that he'd caught her. Fucktard he was.
She collapsed face first onto her bedroll, half in & out of her tent, & didn't even bother crawling into it. Tonight, she was gonna sleep well. Within minutes, she was snoring. And it seemed like just minutes later, her gods damned bladder once again informed her it was roughly three in the morning & time to 'get up bitch & empty me.'
At some point in the night, she must have rolled over, because the front of her was cooler than the back. If she could prolong getting up, she might just get lucky & drift back to sleep. She went to scratch an itch on her cheek, only she hit something solid in the way. Her hand splayed out as it encountered the fluffy solidity & her eyes sprang open in surprise.
The red eyes looking right back down at her were just as round as hers in surprise. Oh. No.
His face backed off so quickly she could almost have been mistaken by its closeness to begin with.
"No – no … it's not what it looks like …."
He crabbed crawled backward as she sat up, giving him an 'are you serious?' look. She didn't know what to say. Honestly, she really hadn't thought he'd try it on, or maybe he'd go for one of the others.
Deep down, Belle didn't know whether to be flattered or offended. She had two head canons going on for the bite scenario. One was that Astarion saw Tav, (or whoever), as the weakest of the group, therefore dispensable if he killed them while feeding. The other was that he felt something like trust (but nowhere near as strong as what the word implied) in the person to not kill him should they wake while he tried to feed. Interestingly enough, when she'd gone down the rabbit hole of vampires & their spawn in dnd lore, Astarion displayed every single tragic trick a vampire used to lure in it's victims, including the seduction & trying to talk his way out of being hurt. She remembered the line she'd found, stating that, deep down, all vampires were cowards.
"I wasn't going to hurt you … I swear … I just needed … well … blood…."
She watched him as he intentionally let the firelight gleam from his fangs. Belle wondered which it was that had made him decide on her.
"You know I can't heal, yeah? I know you heard that discussion. Planning on draining me dry in my sleep, were you?"
"What? No, of course not! I just need a drop, I swear … all this exertion, it's making me weak, I can't think properly … if I just had a little blood, I could think clearer, fight better …."
"I'm sure you could." She dragged a hand down her face. Luckily, she was too tired right now for her shoulder devil, who was busy chanting at her to just 'let him fucking suck you dry, you don't need the blood, fuck the blood, he can have it!'
He didn't respond. He wasn't backing off; she hadn't said no, nor had she raised an alarm. He was in full survivalist mode right now, the slight promise of blood overpowering his more primal instinct of self-preservation.
"Please …" he pleaded, voice broken. She'd never heard it from him before. There was no cajoling going on, just desperation.
"Hang on a minute." A thought had occurred to her. She rolled back into her tent, grabbing a small, very sharp knife she'd found for 'just in case situations'. Along with a freshly boiled rag & a small tin cup, she remerged, Astarion standing now, casting glances between what she was doing & the rest of the sleeping camp. Her eyes darted to where Lae'zel should be on duty.
"She's gone wide," he told her in his soft voice, making a circle with his hand, answering her unspoken question of where Lae'zel had disappeared to. She took that to mean she'd widened her patrol of the camp.
Nodding, Belle then motioned him to follow her just a ways out behind her tent. He didn't ask questions, his eyes flicking between the items she placed down on a fallen log. Knife. Bandage. Cup.
"Oh. I see." He put it together.
"When did you last feed?" she asked him all business like, rolling up her sleeve.
"Last night. But it's only been small animals. I need something more ... robust."
"Hmm-hmm. Why me?"
He knelt before her, watching her work meticulously.
"If you must know … you … your aroma … smells the most … enticing."
Her eyes flicked up to meet his, slate to red. Made sense. In a way. Her blood would be the one most free of infections, the one with the most immunities, the one who'd had the richest diet of not just healthy proteins & minerals but a good share of carbs. A third head cannon appeared. He just wanted the nicest smelling food.
"Why haven't you alerted the others?" he asked suddenly.
His question came as a bit of a surprise. She'd been functioning on autopilot with him, she realised, too used to his scripted lines & responses. Having something new meant she got to now make her own choice of response & there was a lot more options available than just three or four.
She picked up the little knife, honed to scalpel sharpness. It had just been sitting in the bottom of a basket she'd kicked over. She held it up in the moonlight, admiring the glimmer on the metal.
"You're pretty hungry, yeah?"
"That's an understatement. But yes."
"I can't stand to see people go hungry."
He waited for a further explanation. None came. He blinked.
"That's it?" he said.
"Pretty much. I can't give you much. Turns out I need it to live, too. Not that it's much consolation to you right now, but, if I could give you more, I would."
"You'd let me bite you?"
She nodded, bringing the knife to her wrist.
"You're fucking annoying, Astarion, but it turns out, I like annoying."
She slashed across her wrist, making sure to keep the wound shallow enough to draw plenty of blood, but not deep enough so she'd bleed out. It pattered down into the little clean tin cup. She'd always been funny about blood. She could deal with others in a crisis, touch it, clean it up no worries at all. When it was hers…
"Ugh. Tell me when the cups full." She had to look away.
A cold finger touched her fist. She glanced down to see him wrap his pale fingers gently around hers, turning her hand so not a drop of blood was lost outside the cup. Her eyes flicked up to his, where she could see in the moonlight, they looked entirely black.