#i am unwell about the both of them

[madebysimblr]

Takuya: Chin up a bit. Good. You were born to be in front of a camera, Red.

Envy: Obviously. How often do you find yourself in San Myshuno?

Takuya: Not often. [snickers] Why gonna miss me?

Envy: [laughs] Keep it in your pants for a second. I was going to see if I could hire you for my bands next album cover.

Takuya: Oh really?

Envy: We're both talented. Might as well work together, no?

Takuya: Hmmm. How about if I'm ever in the city, I'll hit you up?

Envy: Sure. This is not very professional of you.

Takuya: We're taking a much needed break. I got what I need for the wall anyway. Now I need you.

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

fantasy au scribbles!!

[here-comes-the-moose]

Okay I’m a lil buzzed after brunch, but can you imagine Phee and Tech picking up little things for each other while they’re out that they know the other would LOVE? Like Tech is out and about and he sees idk some antique vase and immediately goes into the store and buys it since it’s from an era Phee is studying and in a color she loves and/or has not found yet. And Phee browsing a bookstore and she sees a book on flora and fauna from a specific planet that Tech had been wanting to learn more about, so she adds it to her cart full of books and surprises him when he gets back home. Like CAN YOU IMAGINE???😭😭😭

[oatm3al-c00kies]

the way everything about poseidon's body language in that scene was just screaming i’m sorry i’m sorry i wish it were different i’m sorry

[skitskatdacat63]

2009 Japanese Grand Prix - Sebastian Vettel

[goldiipond]

you guys ever hear about gay people

[relicsongmel]

Do you guys ever think about Iris' blushing sprite?

Do you ever think that the first time we see it. is RIGHT AFTER she hears Phoenix use her real name for the first time?

Imagine loving a man. that didn't even know your REAL NAME until five years after you "broke up." Imagine that man loving you back despite him not knowing a thing about who you really are. And you're okay with that

Because you don't really like who you are anyway.

And once the illusion shatters and fate forces the two of you apart?

None of it matters anymore. If anything it's what you deserve for thinking you could live out your lie with no consequences. It's what you deserve for daring to try to find happiness in a world that has cast you and the people you love aside time and time again.

And then. When against all odds he blindsides you by entering your life again

You hear your name escape his lips. And in that moment you realize

Maybe being seen for who you really are isn't so bad after all.

Maybe. JUST MAYBE. With time. You could learn to finally drop your facade and live in earnest. To fight for what's right the way he told you he wanted to do.

And it shows on your face. It's shown by your rose-colored cheeks and a shy smile that's impossible for you to hide. And for the first time in several years

You don't feel like you need to.

[electric-plants]

cytham reading together from a single book spread out between them is actually something that can be so personal

[good-beans]

This is depressing but I have a HC that Fuuta’s mother had died shortly after she and his father divorced, and his dad never told him nor his sister about it.

HEY. HEYYYYY. 😭 I GUESS I’LL JUST CRY THEN

From a thematic standpoint this makes me crazy because one of Fuuta’s big themes is invasion of privacy (stalking/doxxing someone and now being afraid of prying eyes) – so such a major gap in information is extra painful. It would be so easy for him to look her up and find out what happened! He could have the whole story in a few minutes, with a few clicks! But he doesn’t, and his father knew he wouldn’t. Whatever happened between her and the Kajiyama family was bad enough that Fuuta refuses to look into her at all. It’s clear he’s emotionally avoidant, and it’d make sense that he avoids any thoughts of her after she’s gone. This makes his interrogation question even more heartbreaking, since he’s finally facing his emotions head-on, no matter how painful they may be. He’s finally growing and changing and ready to admit to his failures/needs, and it’s waaaay too late. 

On the other hand, you mentioned a version where she dies while he's in Milgram, neither of them aware of what's happening to the other. I am so emotional about the prisoners’ families on the outside ;---;

Even if they aren’t great support systems, it breaks my heart thinking of them worrying themselves sick over their loved one’s sudden disappearance. I don’t think Yuno’s family knew about her nighttime activities, but either way their young daughter is gone and there’s so many horrible possibilities it could have been. If the Kusunoki parents heard that Muu’s friend was stabbed and their teen daughter was missing, what awful conclusions must they come to about her getting killed/kidnapped? Shidou’s relatives and coworkers hear about the accident, and then never hear back from him. They know what kind of mindset he was in, and know what that means. Similarly, when Mahiru’s family hears her boyfriend’s body was recovered after a suicide, and no one has heard from their daughter, there’s really one likely outcome. Mikoto promises to come home, but he never shows. His sister cries reading reports of bloody murders at the train station where he makes his daily commute. Kotoko’s family (and maybe Lucky herself) know that she got involved with a powerful family accused of kidnapping. So when she’s gone without a trace, they must be wracked with grief that they finally got their revenge. 

All that to say, Fuuta’s family is equally heartbroken when their son, just having turned twenty a few days ago, doesn’t make it home to celebrate. His mother gets her first call from the family in years, and instead of good news, they tell her that her little boy is gone. I don’t know how you pictured her dying, but if she was in a bad state now, this could definitely be the thing that pushes her over the edge. Now, when Fuuta returns to his life, he’ll discover another death that happened “because” of him. Even if his father and sister don’t blame him for disappearing, I can’t imagine him shrugging off that guilt so easily…

In conclusion. OUCH.

[vigilantellie]

Lark says "Hi, dad" and it is cold. Tired. Distant. That's all that's left between them-- "Dad" is a hollow thing. There's nothing there. Or, well, maybe one thing is there: Blame. It's someone's fault, and maybe it's Lark's, maybe it's Henry's, but someone's to blame. Maybe both of them are.

Sparrow says "Hi, dad" but what he's really saying is "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." He's begging, pleading, and later, when he finds himself all but CLINGING to his father, he knows his apologies are hollow things, and no one is listening. Because yes, Sparrow is his father's son, but oh, Henry is his brother's father, and both have had enough of begging, of boundaries built and broken. But all Sparrow has are apologies--that's all that's left.

Guilt--that's all that's left between the three of them.

[boywifesammy]

john & abuse - a study

the first few months after mary’s death, john was silent. dean had never seen such a blank look on his father’s face. he didn’t know it at the time, but he’d never see that vibrant look of joy from his childhood ever again.

john drank, but he mostly kept it to himself. at least at first. he hid the empty bottles where dean couldn’t find them and kept an eye on sam, though he never stepped in to intervene when he started crying.

more than scared, dean remembers being confused. he remembers sitting for hours on their dirty living room rug rocking his sobbing baby brother back and forth in his arms, trying to decipher john’s muttered slurs from the other room.

it was a year before john was lucid enough to be of any help. dean nearly jumped out of his skin when his father hugged him. he smelt of cigarettes and beer, but he was warm, and gentle, and dean hugged back.

‘i took care of sammy,’ he reassured his father. dean didn’t know the word for grief, but he felt the painful clench in his chest when he thought about his mother. it was there when he thought about his father too, but it didn’t bother him so much anymore. at least he had sammy.

john took dean’s face in his hands, staring down at him with heavy eyes. his beard was too long. his hair a shaggy mess. he looked dean in the eyes, and nodded curtly. good job, maybe. or, more likely, okay.

then he walked away, and dean sat there for far too long, wondering why he didn’t feel anything at all.

hunting life was different. john had a passion for the hunt and when they were on the job, he ate, sleep, and breathed violence. there was a jerky quality to him all the time, like he had two eyes peeled for the enemy and another on the back of his head to make sure that dean had his hold on his brother. when they did local hunts, dean would see it firsthand. the switch from whiskey to cigarettes. sharp daggers spread out across the motel bed. missing person’s reports and esoteric literature tacked up on the ugly wallpaper.

sometimes dean missed mary, missed how warm and soft she was in a way that john never was. but mostly, he was happy that his father was fighting for her. fighting for their family. fighting to keep dean safe, so that dean could keep sam safe.

dean knew what PTSD was. the full clinical title was lost on him but he saw it first in john’s war vet buddies, and now in the few hunters they ran across. dean recognized it right away. shuttered eyes. shifty movements. sleeping with one hand under their pillows, unchecked anger that could storm to the forefront practically unprovoked.

dean never gave it a name, but he knew about PTSD. he saw it in his father too. john never beat them, never hit them, barely even yelled at them. and if he did yell, dean knew he deserved it. he knew it was out of love, because dean couldn’t make mistakes, they just couldn’t afford it. not in this life.

john never beat dean but he got edgy on hunts. erratic. pulsing with so much misdirected anger that sometimes the mere presence of another in the room would send him into a frenzy. so dean doesn’t blame him for anything that happens on the job. it doesn’t count, not really. so what if john hit him in the side with the butt of his rifle on the last salt and burn? he walked right into that ghost’s trap. or when he beat him unconscious last friday? dean was possessed. he didn’t want to, he had to. and when he made dean sleep outside in the shed last winter? it was a rough hunt. dean disobeyed, and sammy got hurt. he deserved all of that and more.

dean didn’t count the training either. hunting wasn’t an easy life, and he didn’t blame john for that. if anything, he revered his father’s tenacity and wit. nothing in life comes easy. of course john knocks him on his ass during every training brawl. sammy sure as hell isn’t old enough for dean to practice with, and monsters don’t go easier because you’re little. so what if he faints a few times during PT, or if he has to fight on a broken bone, or if he sees black from exhaustion when he stands up too quick? it was dean’s fault that he threw up blood after john made him run endless laps around the motel parking lot. he should’ve drank more water.

dean knew it was all worth it when they came back from a successful hunt and his father ushered him into the bathroom to fix him up. when he stitched dean closed and gently wiped the blood off his skin and told him not to worry, that chicks dig scars. sometimes he even let dean sneak sips from his flask, and dean would sit real still with his shoulders squared, letting the buzz cover the pain.

dean knew it was worth it because the better he was, the less sammy had to suffer. he never bore the brunt of john’s rage during hunts. after all, he was just a kid, if he fucked up it was on dean for not teaching him right. sam could run more laps than dean and he had a killer shot and he’d never had to puke blood for it. he never had to fight dad. he’d only ever passed out twice, and each time dean was there to drag him back into the motel and feed him small sips of gatorade.

john was never there when dean woke up. dean didn’t blame him, there were more important things he had to do and dean would be fine. he knew how to take care of himself. ‘concussed?’ his father would text a few days later. ‘no,’ dean would text back, even if he was, because it wasn’t like there was anything john could do to help.

but dean was always there for sam. he made sure that sam never puked blood or passed out or cried because his stitches were too tight. he was his little brother, his little sammy, and if anything happened to him… hell. dean would die. he’d just die. he couldn’t take that.

sam left for stanford on a clear, gauzy summer night. he argued for hours with his father. dean stood to the side as he watched and didn’t say a word. john never beat them but he got irritable, and that meant bad hunts, and bad hunts meant extra stitches and bone-deep scars and those kinds of injuries that only hospitals could treat.

dean never understood why sam was so hellbent on overcomplicating their lives. they had it good. sam was safe, dean was loved, and john— well, john got by. he kept it together, for them. for dean. he kept dean safe so all he had to worry about was sammy, and now sam was leaving.

‘come with me,’ sam had asked him on the sidewalk. he had a massive backpack strapped to his chest. dean’s heart was breaking into so many little pieces.

‘sammy…’ he’d whispered back, because, god, this wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

‘come with me, dean. you don’t have to stay with him.’ anger willed up in dean. the same hot-cold anger that he saw in john when sam disobeyed.

it almost made him feel good. loved. righteous. he was his father’s son and he was made of scrap metal and leather and motel carpet, but he was loved. cherished. god, he was full of so much love. why couldn’t sam see that?

‘i’d never leave him. why the hell would you even suggest that?’ sam’s eyes went hard. he laughed, bitter and ugly, and shook his head.

‘you know what, dean, i always knew you’d choose him— this life— over everything else. over me.’ and dean wanted to scream, because how dare he. how dare he, when he never had to puke blood, or wash out the vomit from his father’s clothes, or wake up every morning to the heat of their mother burning on the ceiling.

but dean knew that deep down, this was a good thing. it was a sam thing. it was a boy who had the freedom and the love to be more than a weapon and a boy who was loved so much that it let him be selfish.

sam sneered at him, spitting out his words like they burned in his mouth.

‘you’re a goddamn coward.’

then he left, and dean didn’t stop him.

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

got so into my laughingstock feels that i burnt my fuckign toast

[kakusu-shipping]

I want everyone to know I am just as unhinged about the Mario movie as ever, I am simply unable to provide content for myself because everyone who has thus far made gif sets or posted screen shots from the movie has blocked me

[chopper-witch]

Need everyone to know that Gale and my tav Ashla (who I am also playing in a tomb of annihilation campaign) um, actually each other until they’ve out info dumped each other so much all that’s left is making out.

[cosmic--static]

old sandman sketches

[tavtime]

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Fandom: Baldur's Gate 3

Rating: General audiences

Length: 3.7k (oneshot)

Relationships: Halsin & Minthara (platonic)

Summary:

"There was a particular turn of phrase that came to him, considering her. He would wake with it on the tip of his tongue, although he dared not utter it in her presence. To speak it aloud would have been to acknowledge the silence between them, and what had beget it. But he thought it. Alone in the night with the hum of her, her cyclone-eye stilled fury and the ring of her blade in the dark, he thought it: Bad blood." ------ Halsin doesn't like Minthara. But he thinks maybe he understands her, which is arguably worse. (Character study for Halsin & Minthara's odd, combative relationship and the ways in which they are far more alike than different. To the constant annoyance of them both.)

Read below, or on AO3

When she believed no one to be listening, when the world was deep in dreaming silence and the fathomless darkness was absolute, Minthara hummed.

Halsin knew she did not realize her audience. In truth, she barely had one. It only half-occurred to him to listen, and not every night: in trance, he more often wandered deeper into the chambers of his own mind, away from the conscious world. But some nights, he found his attention held captive. Keening the edge of her sword against the whetstone or scrubbing the day’s mud and blood from her plate as she held watch by the fireside, a rumble would arise from the depths of her chest. It thrummed, and ebbed, waxed and waned, kept tidal time with the rhythm of her hands. 

The sound was not loud, nor particularly melodic. It always died before traveling far, lost itself in the forest and the crackle of the flame. It put him in mind of the Underdark’s gluttonous caverns. Sounds died rapidly there, too, born already one foot in the grave of their own echoing destruction. He wondered if this was why she did it: to be reminded of the growling of the hungry earth. Reminded of her home. 

If she had known he listened, she would have pricked his eardrums with that blade, pierced into him to steal back the sound.

There was a particular turn of phrase that came to him, considering her. He would wake with it on the tip of his tongue, although he dared not utter it in her presence. To speak it aloud would have been to acknowledge the silence between them, and what had beget it. But he thought it. Alone in the night with the hum of her, her cyclone-eye stilled fury and the ring of her blade in the dark, he thought it:

Bad blood.

———————

Whatever Sura Tav had seen in the drow’s mind as she bled out onto the temple’s grimy floor was not something Halsin was capable of sharing, or comprehending.

He understood something of spite, and much more of rage. Both had pushed out through his skin in furred bursts, lengthening his teeth, sharpening his fingers into fine and merciless claws. Both had burned in his belly along with the blood of the goblin raiders. He did not drink it—not really, not exactly—but he tore through throat and tendon with his great teeth, and that part of him that was beast took secret pleasure in the mouthful.

His rampage through the temple ruins had been all but complete. His new allies had fallen reassuringly into step at his flanks. The dance-step formation they kept with each other reshaped itself to accommodate him. His desires and their desires were, if not identical, then certainly consonant. To fight with them felt right—felt natural. 

And yet when the ground had been fed with the blood of all but one of their enemies, the differences between him and them were made stark. Sura had entered the final chamber, her githyanki and tiefling companions a half-pace to her rear, swords raised and ready. The others were arrayed behind them. The human warlock and wizard kept back at his own heels, the pale elf vanished into the shadows near the far wall. They had all been progressing steadily forward, when he witnessed them freeze in their tracks as one.

Eyes flashed in the dark at the opposite end of the room. The woman who had stepped into the light was not especially imposing, for her kind, her physical presence not noteworthy… but her eyes. Gods, her eyes. The last eyes he’d seen like that had yielded the crawling nightmare that had drawn him there. A nightmare that likewise nestled deep inside the minds of those he had taken as allies.

The magic of the aberrations was alien to him, as was the experience of those infected. Still, he could not help but feel as though his skin crawled with more than revulsion when the drow’s attention turned to Sura. The strange woman’s eyes were alive with desire. Her open palms had flexed, her body turned toward their group. She wanted to take—was taking—and he had seen tremors quake through Sura’s shoulders, though she held her ground in silence. Her breath came quicker and sweat beaded on her brow, but she stood steadfast, and did not blink.

With a crackle like heat lightning it was over. The drow had gone for her blade, and the three women before him fell on her as a whirlwind. For a moment he watched, dazed at what had transpired, then with a start he made to follow. A hand at his side brought him up short. In a display of either exceptional loyalty or suicidal bravery, the warlock had sunk a hand deep into the fur of his right flank, and urged him to stillness. His eyes locked on the four engaged in close combat. “Wait,” he had said, and to his left Halsin felt more than heard the wizard echo the sentiment. 

Then the drow was on the floor. Sura loomed over her, slicked in gore: her own, the drow’s, that of the goblins who had served this woman with such zeal. The drow spat blood and met her gaze in unblinking challenge. Even crumpled in the dirt like a bird downed midflight, her eyes burned with barely-concealed fervor. Broken. Doomed. And yet she was still afire inside.

What had Sura seen in her, in that moment? The question would nag Halsin through all that came after. Perhaps, in the righteous inferno of Minthara’s mind, Sura Tav had seen herself as she might have been. Perhaps it was only that Minthara reminded her of someone else, someone long ago and far away, and she could not be complicit in murdering that memory. 

They had left her there, bleeding onto the flagstone. Halsin could not pretend to feel easy about it. His instincts thrashed at leaving a wolf at his back, no matter how hamstrung and defeated. But Sura had shaken her head, and sheathed her dagger, and that had been that. The drow was left to the elements and the turning of the wheel of fate, cradled in the ruined embrace of her dead army. 

He had not expected her to rise from the death he left her to, and haunt him.

———————

All the land had been eaten by shadow. What small pockets of light they had carved out for themselves were cramped, close huddles. To give one another space would have been to spread themselves too thin, to flirt too close with the ravenous dark. 

He might almost have preferred to take the chance. He was, by all estimations, a patient, practical man. But Minthara’s nearness inspired a desire in him to do impatient, impractical things. Like fight. Or flee. Or willfully forget.

A childish notion. If he closed his eyes so that he could not see the spider, that would not render the spider unable to see him.

Caged in the dungeons beneath Moonrise, she’d seemed to him a revenant, an angry spectre of the past returned to life. For a moment he’d imagined himself back in Menzoberranzan—half a lifetime away, memories buried deep. He’d seen her face and remembered the matron who’d kept him like an exotic pet; he’d seen her shackles, and felt them, ghostly, around his own wrists. 

But this drow was not that drow, this woman was not that woman. Her eyes had rolled wildly in her head while her own captors stood, mocking, at either side. They had gloated as they shredded her mind, erasing her as though her past was as meaningless to them as her present. 

As before, he had watched his companions reach out to her, mind to mind. It was Lae’zel who stepped forward that time. Her fingers wound tight around the hilt of her greatsword. The very air held its breath. She pushed her will down into the woman at her feet, magic roiling out around them both. He found it impossible to look away.

Then Minthara had swayed upright. Her face was a blank mask, a well without a bottom. Lae’zel had barked a command at her jailers. Though Halsin boggled even now to remember it, they had walked away free. 

And then she’d begun to travel with them. He could not see into her mind, as the others could. He could only hear her words, and leave the judgement of her convictions to his allies. He trusted them. He did not trust her. For her part she seemed indifferent to him, in a way he suspected was deliberate affectation. 

What she seemed to trust most was the darkness itself. She moved through the shadows with graceful steps, wielded them as cover with as much surety as she wielded her sword. 

One morning—though the word held little meaning there—not long into their new-forged alliance, he’d caught her staring at him. He had almost finished his breakfast, and looked up from his bread to find her eyes fixed on him. 

“Do you need something?” he asked.

“I overheard you and the ranger speaking last night.”

He’d startled, taken aback. He had shared with Sura a little of what he remembered of drow, from his time as a captive. It had not occurred to him that he might be overheard. He was unsure if it bothered him that he had been.

“What is it to you?”

“Are you afraid of me?”

The question took him by surprise. “I’d be a fool not to be,” he replied. “You’ve only recently ceased to see me as a target for murder.”

She had waved a hand, dismissive. “I’m not referring to that, although—you speak truly. But no. Laying my time with the cult aside, if such a thing is even possible. Do you fear me because of what I am?”

“No.” Her mind was full of holes, but certain aspects of her character were unquestionable. He had not known her for long, but about this he was confident he was right. “You would not attempt to lock me away in such a manner.”

“I might have,” she said. “Once, I might have. But not now, you’re quite correct.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Then even you are capable of change.”

She grinned, an unlovely thing. “All we do is change, druid. You and I, our companions—we fight, kill, claim victory, carry forward. We are neither of us today who we were yesterday, nor who we will be tomorrow.”

“Is that an apology, or an attempt at ingratiation?”

“Neither. I only wish to grant you a more precise measure of who you fight alongside.”

“I still don’t trust you,” he said, after a moment.

“Good. You shouldn’t.”

———————

On the whole, theirs was a company of early risers. Often they stirred to life well before the darkness vanished completely into the underbrush.

Halsin cherished those hours when the day was still new. The Absolute’s armies swarmed thicker the closer they drew to Baldur’s Gate, and avoiding skirmishes with them became more difficult by the hour. Moments of calm were fast becoming precious. So when time allowed for it, he took deliberate care with his morning prayers. Sura, too, met the dawn with a ranger’s rites. Together their voices commingled in ritual: his entreaties and thanks to Silvanus, her recitation of Mielikki’s rites of tracking and beast communion. 

This morning, Jaheira saw fit to join them. She knelt next to him on the cold earth. She offered only silence, her eyes closed in contemplation, but her presence was a comfortable weight at his side. The others greeted the day in their own fashion. Lae’zel and Shadowheart broke camp with a ruthless efficiency, stowing gear with practiced hands. Gale and Wyll had vanished into the treeline in the direction of the day’s travel, scouting ahead. They would return soon enough.

In the stillness between one prayer and the next, Minthara spoke. Freshly returned from the river, her fingers combed her still-wet hair into place. “Ranger. Druids. Do you not have plans to bathe before we depart?” 

“Soon enough,” Halsin replied. “Why?”

“You reek.” Her hair tied back to her satisfaction, she took to lacing her boots. “We cannot expect to surprise our enemies when they can smell you coming.”

“I doubt their surprise will matter for long regardless,” said Sura. She stretched her arms over her head and rose to her feet. “You plan to bleed them either way, surely?”

“I will. Provided we ever get underway.” Her words came out in a growl.

“More haste, less speed,” Halsin said. He reached for his pack, and then stood as well, with a nod to Sura. Surrounded on every side by enemies and wilderness alike, none of them save Minthara were in the habit of bathing alone. More little rituals he held dear: the cleansing, the washing of clothes, the companionable intimacy of water.

Minthara looked from one of them to the other. Her eyes narrowed. “Another day begun with a waste of breath. Let the rest of us know when you’ve finished idling.”

“Prayer is not idling.”

“Prayer is nothing else.” She turned her back on them. “Even now, you spend minutes as though we were rich with them. But we will be very poor indeed if we do not move forward. The city waits.”

Her words were not untrue. Another four days, at most, and Baldur’s Gate would be upon them. In the time he had known her, Minthara had never shied from bloodshed. Indeed, she gloried in it. Yet as they neared their destination Halsin had watched that enthusiasm twist into something more desperate. The flex of her muscles no longer sang only joy with the cleave of her sword. She scythed through the adherents of her former religion like holy retribution made flesh and bone. He thought this reaping, this self-contained maelstrom of destruction, might be the closest thing to prayer that remained to her. An offering made to the only god she had left—the god of her own desires.

———————

Once, Minthara had asked him: “Why did you help to free me?”

It had taken him a long time to answer. They had put another hour’s wear onto the soles of their boots before he responded. “Because you didn’t deserve what was done to you.”

“I doubt that. Not that I deserved it—no one would. But that wasn’t your reason.”

He had thought about his path, to Moonrise and beyond it. The lives of those for whom he was responsible. He thought about the shadow-soaked bones of justiciars, Harpers, his own fellows, rotting under the stars these past hundred years. 

He had thought about Ketheric and his pride, his grief like a sinking ship that had dragged him down, that had dragged so much that Halsin loved down with it. 

He had thought about wrath. He had thought about it, and thought about it. And then he had swallowed it down.

“You’re right,” he said. “It was not.”

She had not asked again.

———————

“Not a lover of wine, druid?” 

Even in the city, polluted as it was by the runoff of civilization, the Chionthar under the moonlight was a sight to behold. He had sought the riverside for its solitude. The rest of their companions were somewhere behind and above him, celebrating their return to Baldur’s Gate with bottles of wine of dubious acquisition. 

But Halsin did not share their festive mood. Walking the city’s cobbles left his feet feeling thick and unwieldy. Houses were too close here, plants too sparse, and everywhere the rabble of desperate souls and the pall of hunger. While they had set up for the night in an out-of-the-way alley abutting the riverfront, he had slipped away down a set of steps that led to a stubby dock. Where he sat, and watched the waves. 

After several minutes, Minthara had strode out from the darkness and taken a seat near him. He did not delude himself that she sought his company in particular, but he thought he might have understood what it was that she did want. His discomfort at being in the city had been so great that it had taken him far too long to recognize a similar emotion in her. 

He shook his head, but did not look at her. “Just the opposite, I’m afraid. Rather over-fond of it when I allow myself to be. These are poor circumstances for such indulgences.”

“No wonder you skulk here alone. Such a lack of mastery of the self is understandably troubling.” Her voice was cold as a mountain stream, a turbulent rush over gravel. It echoed strangely on the walls around them. Lost itself among the waves. “Though I can’t say I disagree. To lower our guard within the very seat of our enemies’ power is a mistake.”

Halsin shuddered. They had encountered Orin again that very day, in the guise of a mercenary of the Flaming Fist. He could still hear her flesh warping, her bones snapping, as her body reshaped itself before his eyes.

Yet the obscenity of the performance was not half so enthralling as Minthara’s reaction to it. Her muscles had drawn taut, her knuckles had whitened around the grip of her sword. She had held herself coiled like a snake. It lasted no longer than a blink.

Then it had passed, and she had once more worn a mask of iron.

“Why did you come to speak to me?” 

Minthara shrugged. “I wished to see if you’d been swallowed by the river. Or scuttled off with the best of the wine. I imagined for a moment that you’d be doing something interesting. A lapse in judgement I won’t repeat.”

He did not take her needling to heart. It was one of the first lessons he had learned about her, and it had served him well. “A shame I’ve disappointed you,” he said. “Perhaps once this is done, we can both relax our control for a time, and discover which of us has the better taste in wine.”

She turned to him. Her eyes caught a glimmer of reflection off the river. “A fine spectacle that would be. I wonder what you’re like in your cups? Do you ever forget yourself? Unleash your rage and let it run, teeth bared?”

“That would be interesting, wouldn’t it? Yet I distinctly recall some claim to the contrary. Odd. Can’t imagine where I’d have heard such a thing.”

She barked out a laugh, and rose to her feet. “I would like to see it, I think.”

Then she was gone again. Long after she had vanished back the way she had come, long after he was once again alone with the darkness, he answered her:

“No. I don’t think you would.”

———————

They’d set Orin’s bones ablaze before they left. None among them had looked back to see if they were being followed. To walk out of the temple to murder alive was a brazen enough affront. Those few of Bhaal’s petitioners still remaining clung to the shadows, whispering among themselves, and chancing eye contact seemed unwise. 

For much of his time in that place, Halsin had been kept drugged and unaware. He felt grateful for this, in a sickly sort of way. He could not bear to dwell upon the alternatives.

He thought that Minthara might have liked to linger. Might have liked to stand vigil there long enough to watch Orin’s bones char clean down to ash. But Astarion had put a hand on her shoulder, which became a hand around her waist when her knees buckled under her. Though they were all sticky with gore, she’d taken the worst of Orin’s claws, and most of the blood soaking her clothes was her own. Under a layer of sweat and grime, her face was a pallid purple-grey. Ordinarily she would have snapped at Astarion for touching her. But she’d said nothing at all, only pressed her lips together in a thin tight line and leaned into him. 

Now she sat in a heap next to the fire. Someone had pulled a spare blanket out of their pack and bundled her onto it; someone else had brought her a bowl of clean water and a rag. There had been offers of further help. She snarled them off. And so everyone else had crawled into their tents to tend their wounds in private, in sets of two or three. None of them had escaped unscathed, and none of them wanted to be alone.

Jaheira had offered to keep him company, as had Sura. They were reluctant to let him out of their sight again. But he could not force himself into a tent, not yet, nor could he settle enough to rest. He needed to breathe clean air, to be under the open sky.

The flames had long died down to a smolder of coals before Minthara spoke. “Druid. Halsin. You are well?”

He studied her for a time before he answered. “I am. Thanks in great part to you.”

“I did not do what I did for thanks.”

“I understand,” he said. Her left forearm was bleeding. She struggled to bind it with a length of clean cloth, cursing under her breath. Abruptly he stood and moved around the fire. He sat down next to her, and took her arm into his hands, and wiped the blood from the gash. Then he finished tying the bandage in place.

She glared at her arm where he held it.

“You freed me,” he said quietly. “You did not need to, but you did.”

“If you think I did not need to,” she said, “then you do not know me at all.”

“I would’ve thought you might have left me to die.”

“I might have killed you. I may yet. But to leave you with Orin?” Exhaustion crept in at the edges of her words. “No.”

She slumped forward, resting her weight on her knee with her good elbow. Breath hissed out between her teeth. Halsin reached for her. He pulled her toward him, bracing her weight against his side. She looked down at his hands, still wet with her blood.

“Aren’t you afraid of me?” she mumbled, her eyes drifting closed.

“Terrified,” he whispered.

Into the stillness of the night, Halsin began to hum.