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unicyclehippo · 11 days

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bg3 prompt: foreshadow

'You never liked my Lady Sh- my goddess,' she said that night, huddled close to the fire, hands almost pressing into the flame. There was a tremor to her fingers, a frightful hunch to her shoulders. Darkness swallowed up everything beyond the boundaries of their camp and Shadowheart alternated between staring out into it and deep into the heart of the fire.

Dante propped themself up on their bedroll, laid out near but not close to hers. Though it hadn't been a question, exactly, Dante knew that it was. Shadowheart did not ask for anything and it was not the prideful thing she made it seem; at a certain point, a child learned not to ask when the answer was a painful constant. Dante toyed idly with the knowledge that they would rip their beating heart from their own chest, if she were to ask for it. It painted a pretty red picture in their mind--hands blood-soaked, on their knees for her. They shook their head, banishing the thought and answering the question she didn't ask.

'I did not.' Dante kept their voice light. They wondered what a goddess's blood looked like, tasted like. If they were to present Shadowheart with the dark lady's heart, would that let her rest?

'From the beginning, you hated her. Don't try to lie to me - I know the truth,' she spat. Her anger wasn't for them, Dante didn't think, but maybe it was. 'Tell me why.'

Prying my secrets from me now? Dante wanted to tease. But it was a question, a request. In the cloak of a demand, certainly, but that was more than enough.

'She was cruel to you.'

'That's all?' Shadowheart laughed. Scratched at the back of her scarred hand.

Dante took it, covering the mark with their own hand to stop her fevered work. They moved closer, sitting up with a wriggle. It wasn't necessary--if they wished, their every motion could be graceful and powerful and direct...but they liked the way she looked at them when they were odd, awkward. To be a strange creature in her eyes was vastly preferable to monster.

'It isn't all. It's what I...disliked the most.'

'Because you care for me.'

'Immensely. Beyond darkness.'

'There is nothing beyond the darkness.'

Dante hummed. Bent over her hand and lifted it to their lips, pressing a warm kiss to the scar. 'Then I shall make something. A light, a refuge. A world,' Dante insisted, as her despair began to lift, a flustered sort of fondness taking its place. 'I'll sing a whole world into existence. It will be the most beautiful place in all the realms and the when the sun sets, there is no darkness because the moon fills the whole sky, and every flower knows a different joke--'

'Absolutely not. The flowers don't talk.'

Dante sighed, long-suffering. 'Very well. What do they do?'

'Nothing! Why must a flower do anything? Can it not simply be beautiful?' Shadowheart scolded through a smile.

'They are beautiful, then,' Dante agreed. 'Each one trying their best to match your beauty and falling short. Even so, we shall be surrounded by incandescent beauty.'

'Oh you are a charmer.'

Dante kissed her hand again, brushing their lips across her knuckles before they lowered her hand, though they did not let her go. Their thumb took up that gentle touch instead, stroking along the same path.

'I have no love for any god,' they told her quietly, and mourned the ease of her smile as it faded. 'But the more you told me of that dark lady, and the more I saw you do with and without her favour, and when she punished you,' Dante snarled before stilling, closing their eyes and hands. Would the goddess bleed midnight black? That most royal colour tinged with the purple of her servants vestments? Did they drape themselves in her blood as Dante now dearly wanted to?

A hand, against their heart. A warmth like a flower unfurling. Dante held Shadowheart's hand in place.

'Forgive me--'

'Yes,' she said, without hesitation.

Dante opened one eye a crack and, seeing neither hatred nor fear, opened the other. 'There were aspects of the dark lady I admired. To walk unafraid under the cloak of night. To have secrets and fears and sorrows and entrust them to her. But I watched as you trusted her, and gave everything to her...and I watched her take more and give nothing back.'

There was an adamantine glint in her eyes, stubborn and strong. 'She gave me great power.'

'You earned that. You earned more than what she gave you. I've never seen devotion like yours--deep and earnest, unwavering--'

'I wavered,' Shadowheart said. Her fingers curled into a fist, still resting against their chest. The fabric of their nightshirt in her hand. They would give it to her. They would give her the shirt off their back, the skin off their back. 'You may not have seen it but she did. Every - every kind deed you did, every nonsense you dragged us into without demanding payment or power or even for the weak to grovel at your feet when you spared them, helped them... I admired you for it, adored you. And she saw it. I would like to say it took time but in truth, my thoughts have been split from the moment I laid eyes on you in that damned pod.'

Dante forgot. She had asked for their help, once. Had it been the first time her prayers had not gone unnoticed?

'You know, I considered once, asking you to join me in my faith.' A deep sorrow crossed her face when her words made Dante flinch. 'An idle thought, long ago.'

'It's alright.'

Shadowheart paused. Then, carefully, she said, 'I thought you only hated her but. You fear her too.'

'Of course,' they agreed, with an almost lazy shrug. 'I would be a fool not to.' She did not buy their ease. Dante did not flinch easily. Guilt churned in their stomach. She deserved a true answer, not bravado. 'It would be...the end of me. If I served her. I don't know what happened to me before the ship and the tadpole but...there is nothing inside of my head but darkness. The only time I feel I am a person is when I sink a blade into someone,' they confessed. If the dark lady were Shadowheart, perhaps Dante could be persuaded to faith. How terrifying it was, though, to put faith in another being. It felt like they were tearing themselves open for her appraisal and Dante was certain that now she would see the rotten heart of them. 'When I fight and kill, my mind is awash in red and after endless black, it is everything. If I served the dark lady, she would take it from me. She would take everything, drain my skull even of the dregs it has now. I would be nothing.'

Shadowheart was pale but not with disgust. Empathy, writ clear in her eyes.

Dante summoned a smile. It was an act, but what wasn't? They were the architect of their own life--joy, pain, faith, love--and tonight they chose to smile.

'That's not to say that you're wrong. I am faithful. I have faith. Just,' they shrugged, 'not in the gods.'

'Oh? Very well, I'll bite. What is it you believe in?'

With a flicker of a thought, Dante pulled their lute from where it lay by their pack--too far to move, they never wanted to move from Shadowheart's side, never--and plucked it from the air with reverent hands. Shadowheart pulled her own away so that Dante could settle the instrument in their lap and her eyes focused, keenly, on graceful hands that roamed its belly and neck and trembling strings.

'Stories.'

'Stories?'

Dante nodded. Half closed their eyes, head cocked, and listened to the music as they began to play. A mournful, solitary tune that Dante heard in their mind whenever they recounted the ship. The emptiness of being--of being alone, of being awake when life had been a thoughtless march, of being--interrupted, interwoven, with two sharper tunes, a march sharp-silver and a lament so similar to that early dirge that it met and matched it before it slipped away once more. Dante played on.

'I woke up and there was a worm in my head, thoughts in my head that weren't mine. I didn't know myself except that I was not that.' Anger snapped against the strings, red. 'And when I tried to recall who I was, I could only think of more people I wasn't. Ithramier who wove a cloak of pure flames. Pharon who called on the blessing of their angelic king to fight the undead hordes for three days unceasing, who held the Chasm of the Kings against evil, and as they slew the last foe drew their own final breath. Lor, witch of the seven barrowhills, who struck down Lashlord Emgaraoch and sent it back to its hellish plane.' With each brief tale, Dante introduced them to the song as well. They had only days of practise, as far as they knew, but whomever owned these hands before them had known their way around a lute and there was such an overwhelming need for Shadowheart--and all their companions--to understand that Dante played as they never had before. Not to distract or charm or frighten. Merely to pluck truth from their soul, what meagre scraps remained of it, and play it into life. 'Whatever stripped me of my memories did not take it all, and I knew what people were, and,'

Dante dared to look up then. Their companions had left their tents, each and every one of them; even Withers lingered just beyond the bright firelight. Wyll sat close, shaking his head at the troubled noble dance they chose for him, foot tapping to it. Karlach sat beside him--perhaps because she could lean against him, or any of them, and not fear to burn them. Dante could not tell if it was a compliment when the fire in her chest roared to life as they strung her lines into play, a blazing rousing tune that could not shake off an iron weight. Astarion lounged with a profound disinterest betrayed by the longing in his eyes. Dante's fingers tripped across his strain again, a song that struggled and pushed and yearned to soar. Astarion stared at them, a loathed vulnerability writ clear across his face, and looked away. Lae'zel knelt across the way with a look of concentration; her march plucked through the night as Dante wondered if she expected to be tested on it in the morrow. Gale closed his eyes as his prideful tune fell, and smiled when Dante called it up again.

'I knew what people could be.'

'But the stories aren't real,' Astarion bit out with a sneer.

The song began to unwind, thread by thread. Each had a moment to shine and be heard on its own.

Dante spoke. 'Maybe not. But aren't they true enough?' they asked, wistful. 'Don't they sing to you? Don't they show you what could be real? Don't they make you dream of the world where someone is as noble as the great heroes, as brave, as kind?' Astarion said nothing to that. Dante played his tune again and, this time, let it soar. Free and golden as the sun. In answer came Dante's mournful, empty dirge plucked through with rage. They closed their eyes and dredged their heart again--what they would not give to a goddess, they would offer freely to their friends. Blood and pain and a hollow aching that nestled in their chest and Dante began to fill it--music became thought and magic, became the grit of dirt beneath their nails and the glint of gold in their palm, became leaves trembling on branches and bitter between their teeth, became wonderment, became bubbling mixtures and the chop of knives not for dismembering but for cooking and campfires and alchemy, became laughter, became meals, became the simple joy of plodding a forest path, became the fierce pain of being embraced, welcomed, the dusty press of moss and mushroom, became every small and wondrous thing Dante had known in a week of life. And the hollow in their chest was not so big. Did not have so many teeth.

The music stopped. Dante did not know how to end it yet, so they simply let their hands fall away from the strings. Their hands and fingers ached with the effort and they stretched them open wide, pressing back against the hurt like a bruise.

Wyll let out his held breath, his tone admiring as he spoke.

'I have caroused and wept in my fathers hall to many talented bards, my friend. You have put them all to shame. I don't know whether to be pleased or not, to know all future musicians shall not live up to this standard.'

Dante grinned. 'You're just happy because it was about you. Somewhat.'

Wyll laughed. He didn't correct them, but Dante could see he fought the urge. They expected he would mention it again, before long.

'I'll give you this,' Astarion said, in that arch way of his, 'you can certainly spin a good tale.' He paused, then flicked a gold Dante's way.

Lae'zel growled at him. 'A single gold is not payment enough.'

'Darling, you aren't exactly the expert on bartering here. Do you even know the worth of a gold piece?'

'The song is priceless,' she told him, voice firm. 'And the wisdom... It is something to consider.'

'High praise, Lae'zel. Thank you.'

'It is not as straightforward as the ten thousand decrees.' She sounded frustrated and, pushing to her feet, she turned back to her own tent with a brusque, 'I will think on this.'

One by one, Dante's companions scattered until it was as it had been, only Shadowheart at their side and the fire. Dante set the lute down carefully.

'Would you believe me if I said I hadn't meant for that to be such a big deal?'

She laughed quietly. She wasn't ready to hear it yet, but she had a laugh like the sweetest moonbells.

'I would, actually.' Shadowheart shook her head in wonder. 'You inspire all of us, and yet you seem not to understand it.' She paused, then added, 'I wondered, for a time, if you truly cared for me. You spoke so highly of everyone, and took time I did not think we could spare to help them, and it made me think...I wasn't special. I wasn't the only one you cared for.'

'Shadowheart...'

'It was a selfish thought, a long time ago.' Another laugh. 'Not so long, I suppose, but it feels a lifetime past. It doesn't upset me now. What we have is even more than that, isn't it?'

Dante nodded. They almost felt like that was the more selfish thought, when it came from them. That they would fight and kill for the others but they would die for her. They said as much and Shadowheart sucked in a breath, expression mercurial, unsettled between a powerful pleasure and a look they could not pinpoint. It was not concern, exactly. Conviction?

'I will never ask that of you,' she said. 'Do you know that? You have promised me yourself forever at my side. I intend to lay claim to it.'

Dante closed their eyes. A strange urge filled their mind--its red was not of that blood-soaked kind, but fire-bright. They reached for their lute again, but Shadowheart took their hand in hers before they could.

'You could speak it, you know. How you feel. Instead of playing it for all to hear. I may not be her servant anymore but there are some things that perhaps require...privacy, if not secrecy,' she teased. 'You always let me lead the way. Why is that?'

Dante's eyes flickered to the night, the dark beyond. 'Because she did not let you choose. Because the rest of your life was orders and punishment. Because everything has been taken from you and I will not take anything more.'

'And what of what was taken from you?'

It scratched something deep inside, that question. Clawed open something that had begun to heal, or at least to close over without Dante poking and prodding at it, well-ignored.

'I think...' (A vast, blank canvas was their mind. Soaked in red paint. No thoughts had ever marred its surface. Not chisels or brushes as their tool but knives and wicked tearing things.) 'I - ' (Fields of rolling hills, the sweet-sick stench of iron. The hills are soft underfoot. They are bodies piled high and your body aches in satisfaction, a job well done.) 'I don't think it is the same. As wicked a thing as it is, I cannot help but think it may have been deserved. That I am more wicked still.'

It was a thought for the night, and one they could not yet answer. Shadowheart lifted their hand and kissed it, their veins burning red as she did. Dante moved their bedroll a fraction closer and tangled their fingers with her as the firelight dimmed and the night drew in closer.

Perhaps that's why I could never be a cleric,' they mused. 'If your dark lady couldn't love you, there is no god who could love me.'

#prompt fill #you can ignore this #my bg3 tag #dante my beloved #i know i didnt USE the word but im pretty sure it is foreshadowing #i havent finished my durge play through but theres SMTH about a god in that

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