Teleporting fucking clones. That was Lady Shar's final challenge for the party.

Karlach and Shadowheart made belines for their clones - clearly, they had no compunction facing down their inner selves. Verres hurtled himself after the tiefling with a screech.

Astarion, too, was quick to engage after a moment of stunned blinking and then a single exasperated huff.

But Atavya was frozen stiff before she even spotted her doppelganger. She knew what she'd find - her mother's kindly mauve eyes staring back at her. She didn't understand why this unsettled her so, couldn't remember. So she steals herself, unsheathes her shortsword, and stalks forward.

She passes the Astarions on a landing leading up to the top platform. It's eerie, seeing two sets of daggers flying, two pairs of pearl fangs gnashing. It's also slightly erotic, but she buries this. She peeks over the railing for a moment - Shadowheart very efficiently dispatched her clone, and it's now three against one on the Shadow Karlach.

Atavya resumes her ascent, and her heart rate spikes inexplicably. Her gut begins churning again, and another hot gush of blood floods the linen rags she's lined in her leggings. From distant corners of her mind, a high feminine voice is chanting to her "breathe, 'Tavya. Breathe,".

She rounds the turn at the top of the steps and spots her - her clone. False Atavya's back is turned, leaning over the balcony and peering down into the chamber. The clone's shoulders and high horsetail shake as if she's weeping. A pang of agony suddenly strikes in Real Atavya's gut, and she cradles her spare arm around her middle.

The clone turns, still somewhat obscured in shadow, and Atavya realizes - she's laughing, not weeping.

As if in response, the pain in Real Atavya's core intensifies, overcoming her and forcing her to one knee. It's so shockingly sudden and significant that it doesn't seem real. "What…?" she starts, disbelieving. She's never encountered magic like this.

"What?" The clone parrots, mockingly. She has a replica of Atavya's shortsword in her hand, and as she steps forward towards the lit brazier between them, the flames reflect off the blade, temporarily blinding Atavya. The Real ranger lifts her hand to shield her eyes, and she's shaking.

Real Atavya can vaguely hear Astarion calling up the stairway behind her, his swift footsteps echoing across the granite. The blood in her head is pounding so fiercely that almost all noise is drowned out. The physical sensation is similar to hollowness, and she can suddenly visualize the tadpole embedded in her brain matter. It's calling to her, echoing her Dream Guardian's invitation and bidding her to at last make use of its powers. Exceptionally well-inclined towards self-preservation, the little bugger was.

It's all very overwhelming. She desperately wishes she could focus, and conjure up some moment of resilience sufficient to plunge the sword in her hands through the Shadow Atavya's heart and sever the curse that's surely been cast upon her. But Real Atavya is on both knees now, and has a fleeting observation that bright crimson blood is now pooling on the flagstones beneath her.

Shadow Atavya stalks forward, and curiosity overcomes the Real ranger. She drops her hand from her brow, suddenly desperate to confirm if it really will be Moraya's eyes staring back at her. It's true - mauve eyes, all at once warm and fierce, peer back at her albeit mockingly. And all at once, she is buffeted with the full force of everything.

Her mind breaks open, temporarily even stunning the tadpole. When the tadpole recoups, its natural instinct is to reach out for others in solidarity and security. Astarion is only yards behind Atavya now, and the mental bridge yanks his awareness into and over hers.

Atavya slumps to the ground, moaning. Shadow Atavya continues her approach, a sinister, predatory grin painted on her face. Astarion recovers physically, even if his mind is still tied into Atavya's, and hollers beseechingly for the others, launching his daggers.

Atavya feels the wind of the flying blades overhead. And she remembers.

She is Atavya Cole. Ranger of the north. She had a lover named Lynni, a sweet blonde half-elf she didn't deserve. She is having a miscarriage. Her father was abducted. Her mother is dead.

She lifts her head with considerable effort, just in time to see the Shadow Atavya topple forwards. Astarion rounds the figure, simultaneously engaging his wrist knife. He slits her throat with frightening resolve. And the evanescent fragments of the figure disappear into Lady Shar's darkness.

—

It is all a blur.

Shadowheart kneels over her body, anxiously fussing and recasting healing spells while Astarion's hands muss through his hair. The vampire must have told the cleric the truth he saw in Atavya's mind, because the cleric undresses the ranger from the waist down, focusing all of her spellcasting over her womb. Atavya's vaguely aware that Shadowheart keeps repeating "I've never done this, I've never done this,"

After a night of fitful rest, the bleeding mostly stops, but fever follows. Astarion lies near enough to her that she mindlessly rolls into his coolness. He places an arm around her - "Should I wake Shadowheart?"

The ranger is recovered enough that she remembers how much she loathes the half-elf, and shakes her head.

The fever does not break by the time the camp arises, but Atavya demands that they carry on.

They enter the Shadowfell. The necromancer Balthazar is subjected to a frenzy of radiant energy by Shadowheart, and falls with relative ease. The Nightsong is evidently an Aasimar woman, but Atvaya isn't thinking clearly enough to immediately understand that Shadowheart has been condemned to murder her. Karlach is an unpleasantly hot presence at her back, Astarion a cold tonic at her side. They're both casting looks at the ranger as the exchange intensifies, and through the waves of her fever Atavya begins to realize that they're expecting her to do something, to once again put a stop to needless killing. Atavya is silent. Farbeit from her to prevent someone their destiny when she has seemingly misstepped at every critical moment of her life so far.

Miraculously, something stays Shadowheart's hand before the killing blow is landed, and the Aasimar is set free. Atavya stands, blinking and wracked with fever chills, in Dame Aylin's awesome presence but otherwise feels… nothing.

—

Shadowheart is bereft, and incapable of any more healing. The party makes their way to the Last Light Inn with haste - Karlach leading with the Moonlantern in one hand and her precious rescued infernal iron in the other. Astarion clings to Atavya's side, running through the full spectrum of his humor in an attempt to make conversation (and assess Atavya for blood loss). She does not speak, and all the remaining color drains from her skin and eyes. Dame Aylin's purifying magic has dusted across the Shadow Cursed Lands like a smattering of a finishing garnish, and occasionally they will pass a newly sprouting plant, or a peculiar moth. It does not rouse her. If anything, reminders of life conjure up memories of loss.

When they arrive at the Inn, there is a frenetic energy despite the emptiness of the Harper encampment, and there are immediate demands that they turn tail and join the Harpers in the final assault on Moonrise Towers. Gale emerges from behind the cleric Isobel, and stills her with a hand on her arm, nodding towards the party. Isobel breathes and seems to fully consider them all. Her eyes settle on the rangers', and Isobel's face softens with recognition of the deep grief she discovers there.

Isobel looks very much like Lynni, and Atavya quakes at the thought. Astarion presses a gentle hand beneath her elbow to steady her.

"Rest," the Selunite cleric implores, only a little bitterly. "But then we must take action, before the curse on these lands ruins us all,"

Atavya surges forward into the Inn, yanks three bottles of various wine from behind the bar, and locks herself in her original room for an entire day.

—

Astarion, clinging to the shadows, descends the staircase to the main floor. Gale and Shadowheart are leaning over the lanceboard as if engaged in the final throes of a riveting set - but there are no pieces on the board. Shadowheart's hands are in her hair, and although her back is to him, he can tell that she's tugging the strands at her scalp so tightly that her long braid has started to unravel. Gale is bent very closely to her, and Astarion strains his doubly keen ears to pick up their conversation.

"It seems you all lost something in that temple, then," the wizard is saying to her, sorrow and sympathy evident in his voice.

Astarion racks his mind.

Shadowheart's loss is obvious - her faith.

Karlach's is too - the infernal iron they found in Yurgir's cache was not enough to stay the collapse of her engine. Astarion doesn't think he'll ever forget the devastating contrast of Karlach's bright, beaming face as she raced into Dammon's makeshift forge, followed by the utter devastation clinging to her shoulders as she walked out.

And Atavya's is clear, even if neither Gale nor Shadowheart nor any of the other companions know the depths of it. They know that in addition to her memories returning to her with cataclysmic force, that she's lost - is maybe still losing - a very unbeknownst pregnancy. That is enough of a tragedy to match the prior two, and it's barely a scratch on the surface of her grief.

And Astarion… well, what did Gale mean? What had he lost that was apparently so obvious to the wizard but invisible to himself?

There's movement at the front doors of the inn, and the main room goes suddenly hushed. Alfira's fingers uncharacteristically miss a thrum of her lute, and Astarion catches the faintest hitch in the bard's voice when she picks up the tune again. He creeps down two more stairs so he can get a line of sight.

It's the ranger, her cloak caked in grime and the long, greasy strands of her hair clingy across her brow. Her eyes are so bloodshot they're nearly as crimson as Astarion's. And her hands - they visibly tremble.

He realizes then, what Gale meant. He's lost her.

He refuses to accept this. He's taken hundreds of lives to the precipice of the chasm and thrown them in. He knows what it looks like, feels like, smells like when Cazador's victims were standing on the edge, moments from the devastating tragedy of loss when their souls were obliterated and they became either prey or spawn. He had stood there himself, once before he turned, and then a thousands time again whenever Cazador tortured him.

He's come to care for her. Perhaps even more than care. That terrifies him, but more than anything, it's invigorating to know that after two decades of being deprived of anything of his own, even a moment of quiet in his own thoughts, he might be able to have just this.

He cannot lose it. Can't lose her.

He races to her, and Alfira's playing stumbles again. Throughout the great room, there's hushed whispering and clutching of goblets. He doesn't give a single rat's ass. He clutches Atavya's forearm and yanks her towards the stairs, hard enough that she gives a small shriek of discomfort. As he always does, he has to force himself to remember to be gentle. She's a mortal, a human, and currently exceedingly damaged. So he pulls her to his side and steers her up to their shared room, wordless and hyper-focused.

He only registers how freezing cold he's allowed the room to become when he re enters it with Atavya's trembling body next to his. He proceeds with an assassin's methodical confidence: deposit Atavya on bed, light hearth, draw curtains, retrieve spare bedding from the wardrobe. He pours a glass of water and deposits it in her hand (at first, he thinks wine would be better, but the stench of liquor is radiating from Atavya).

She is staring up at him from the bed with weary, questioning eyes. She's very young, he considers. For humans, 30 is a respectable age. A mature age. Not to Astarion. She is barely an adult, and she's suffered an inordinate amount. Really, she's suffered every hurt twice over.

The psychic blast he experienced secondhand from her just days before still haunts him. He wasn't sure that after all of Cazador's invented tortures, that he'd ever encounter a type of pain that floored him. He was wrong.

"First things first," he finally says, "are you still bleeding?"

She shakes her head once. "Halsin…," she explains, her voice cracking.

Astarion nods. The druid would have experience with this kind of thing.

"And are you drunk?" All acceptable roads from here are dependent on this not being the case.

She shakes her head again, a little ashamed.

"Then I propose we get you cleaned up and fed,"

She says nothing, but moves one hand with catatonic slowness to unclasp her cloak. Astarion makes a tutting noise and a shooing motion, and bends down to do it for her.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asks, quieter now.

She's silent for a long while again, while Astarion removes each layer of her putrid clothing with exceptional care and then proceeds to dump all of it in an empty basket with distaste.

She clears her throat and reaches for the glass of water he'd poured for her. She downs it, and he pauses his nursemaiding to pour her another. She takes a careful sip and clears her throat again.

"I presume the tadpole showed you everything?" She's hoarse from crying, but nearly intelligible now.

The old Astarion would have made some horrible joke. Making light of the suffering of others used to be the only thing that propped up the thin wall between unfeeling and feeling. Maybe it's the Shadow Curse, maybe it's her. He can't do it anymore.

"Everything," he admits.

She's silent again for a long stretch of time, and Astarion does not press her. He wraps her tightly in a robe, noting that she's in fact relatively clean from the shoulders down. Perhaps some cleansing cantrip from the druid, so she'd not be needlessly reminded of what she'd suffered? Still, her hair is a deplorable tangle of blood and dust.

He leads her to the bathing chamber and begins to draw lukewarm water from the tap. He wishes he could call on a Harper to fetch hotter water, but they're all encamped at Moonrise. He won't suffer her the indignity of having someone they know bring it up, or leave her alone to her thoughts.

When the tub is full, Atavya needs no prompting and settles herself into it without complaints, as is her way. On the way down, her hand comes to her womb again.

"Are you alright?" Astarion asks, nervous. He's very uncertain about this sort of thing - how long it lasts, how much it hurts.

"Halsin said it could take me a few more days to recover. There might be more blood clots. But the risk of infection is sorted,"

She's immersed now, and sweeps her hair over her shoulder and into the water, starting a practiced regimen of rinsing and finger combing, rinsing and combing.

Astarion kneels behind her, and cannot help but bring his hands to her shoulders in as kind and as tame an embrace as he can muster under the circumstances.

Her shoulders tense for a moment, but slowly relax. He remembers the first time he found her in this chamber, weeping with untold grief. How pitiful she'd seemed then, and how ashamed he is to admit that at the time, the vestiges of him thinking of her very much like prey still dictated so much of the way he approached her. Lying beside her, night after night, her pale, soft face illuminated by the glow of Isobel's enchantment, has reformed him. Fucking her has helped, too.

She must be remembering that encounter too, because she starts - "What have you been feeding on? Since I…?"

"The oxen," he says "And I'm fine, thank you. You've lost enough blood for the time being,"

Atavya doesn't protest. She's frighteningly pale, and her veins are purple bruises along the lengths of her limbs. She's studying herself under the water, too, seemingly unashamed of her body. Astarion has gathered that a life away from society has granted her considerable ease with her own nudity.

"How could I not have known? Months went by since the crash. Halsin said that, with that level of bleeding and - "retained tissues" - I must have been at least 11, 12 weeks along?"

Astarion has no answer for this. He also knows she is not seeking an answer from. She simply needs to be heard, so that the questions and anxieties don't wind up echoing infinitely within her own fragile mind. It was very similar between Astarion and his siblings, although they almost exclusively chose bullying and mockery over compassion.

He takes over washing her hair. He's exceptionally good at it, having had dozens of years of practice mastering his own coif. She has quite a bit more of it, so it takes him much longer. Atavya is content to lay in the tepid water, eyes closed, and Astarion - a newly birthed part of him thinks he could stay like this forever.

He thinks of love languages then - something he read in a book he borrowed from Gale. (Gale said it was frivolous and that he had no need for it. Astarion assumed that any reading material the wizard would discard must actually be entertaining). There were five - gifts, quality time, words of affirmation, physical touch, and acts of service. Before he'd ever learned of the concept, he had observed that Atavya had a tendency to serve others selflessly, and especially so if she had any fondness for them. Words and gifts - these were essentially unnecessary in the life of a ranger. And quality time and physical touch - those required companionship, of which she had had little. He considers that even now, with the exceptionally deep and intimate look he's had into Atavya's past, that this has always been her way. To give and give and give with no thought to herself or her wellbeing. For gods' sakes, they'd been traipsing the Sword Coast for weeks, saving every fucking gnome, child and owlbear known to creation, and she'd not even noticed that she was pregnant.

He doesn't know what his love language is. Maybe it had been physical touch - seduction and assassination seemed related enough art forms. Or maybe it was words, and he just didn't know how to use them in any way other than weaponry. He wonders if he could ever figure it out. He decides that he'll just start here, this very day, by washing Atavya's hair and finding her something to eat.

—

An hour later, Atavya is propped up in bed with an empty soup bowl and several crumbs of crusty bread strewn beside her. The room has been properly warmed and her eyelids are heavy, but she claims she's not yet ready to sleep. Astarion has perched himself on an armchair next to the bed. He's been so cautious not to infringe on her bodily autonomy. He also considers that he doesn't know where she's landed on the issue of her late lover (although, of course, it seems there was little enough there that Atavya had taken a male to her bed rather recently). He won't join her, not without a proper invitation.

She's braiding her hair, which has regained a bit of its shine. Indeed, the circles under her eyes and veins in her neck and arms aren't quite so pronounced now that she has a bit of hot food in her. She catches him staring at her, and she reaches for him, and he's powerless not to take her hand. She gives him a small tug, and he moves to the bed, but does not lie down.

"What of the buxom half-elf I saw? Lynni?"

Atavya swallows, quiet for a moment, clearly pained. "I left her. I made a choice. I have to carry it,"

Atavya looks back up at Astarion, and reaches for his face. He takes her hand and guides it against his jaw, where it lingers for a moment, and then she lowers it to his neck, one finger tracing the bite marks there. They are a visceral reminder of the burden he carries every day, and an entire lifetime of memories that were stolen from him. She's never touched him in this way, or looked at him like she does now - mostly tender, mostly unguarded, and slightly broken.

Atavya speaks first, right when he considers bowing his lips to hers.

"It seems unfair, Astarion, that you know… everything now. And I still know very little of your truth. The honest truth," she clarifies.

He shakes his head. "In that moment when the tadpoles connected, it was like a breaking wave. I felt it more than experienced it or saw it. The general gist is there… but not the details,"

Her lips purse, and blood rushes to them. They're tantalizing, and he wonders how long he'd have to wait before tasting her again. Maybe he should ask Halsin, as skin crawling as the thought is…

"Then I'll make you a deal," she says, her hand rising again to trace his cheek and brow. "We will use our tadpoles to… fill in the blanks,"

This is a frightening and disturbing prospect. He's often thought about leveraging the tadpole in battle, but has steered clear of it for precisely the telepathic reasons Atavya is alluding to. He wants to be a horror monster on his own terms.

He knows that's not how this can go between them. But he tries to deflect anyways.

"So I presume you know now… how the Nautiloid snatched you from Baldur's Gate?" Astarion thought this would have been an innocuous enough question. Clearly he was wrong. Atavya turns an appetizing shade of scarlet.

"I was… on my way to procure a contraceptive potion,"

Astarion snorts, and pats her hand paternally. "All's well that ends well then,"

Atavya doesn't meet his eyes. Clearly it was the wrong thing to say. It never would have been the right thing to say, he considers. But this particular conundrum was not a dilemma commonly faced by vampires. For once, he had no lived (or unlived) experience with which to form some sardonic joke to diffuse the tension.

"Unless…," Astarion starts, haltingly. "You would have rather kept it?"

"No." It's abrupt, and she shakes her head once, definite. "No, not a bastard." It's the most assertive show he's seen from her since the trial. But then she pauses the motion, and her gaze rests on some invisible thing in the far corner of the room.

"I guess… I was a bastard. I'd started seeing visions of them - mother and father - before. And they looked to be in love. But I realize now that that was a waning thing, maybe even a product of them wanting to put on a good show for me when I was young. Eventually, it became a simple business relationship. And my mother wouldn't deny me access to my father, even if it was only for a few weeks out of the year."

He doesn't know why he asks this - it's not something he ever would have cared about before: "Were they ever truly in love?"

Atavya snorts. "Very much so. My mother - she became a follower of Loviatar early in her life…,"

Astarion can't help but laugh. "Like mother, like daughter,"

Atavya snorts again, and her hand drifts over her shoulder to touch the scars left by the acolyte's 'worship'. She continues, absentmindedly stroking the mark. "She traveled to Luskan annually, to make her offerings. That's where she met father. He… reformed her," she says with a wry smile.

"They were happy for a time, father even going so far as to travel with her for a year. But he wasn't meant for an outlander's life. He convinced mother to deliver me in Yartar, and as soon as I was weaned - mother absconded me away, to his heartbreak,"

"They were never married?"

She shakes her head. "Never,"

He can tell she wants to say more, but that the words are trapped in her throat. She reaches for him, and he's powerless not to take her hand. The tadpoles connect, and the floodgates open again.