#she was flesh and blood and alive and available and ALL his if only he'd been capable of wanting her enough to take her

[esmes]

i'd be twice the wife she was 🎥 @theriddletrades

[dismalzelenka]

Febuwhump 4 - Obedience

This is from the same timeline as Day 2's entry.

Context: Post-canon. Miriam's been subsumed by Hadar as a consequence of betraying her pact and has been brought back by her sister with some questionable divine help. There are complications.

This contains spoilers for one of the available companion endings.

Pairing: Gale/Tav Warnings: none

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The first time Miriam realizes she's really and truly trapped is when she simply tries to walk through the front door.

“Where are you going?” Gale's voice booms from everywhere and nowhere all at once as her hand jiggles the doorknob to the room where the portal to Eleanor's tower lies.

It's strange to think of it as Eleanor's tower now, but she supposes her sister has had the place longer than Gale ever has at this point.

“To see my sister,” Miriam says.

“I told you to stay put until your magic stabilizes.”

“You told me not to exert myself,” she argues. “An hour for tea in a warded tower is hardly the risk you seem convinced it is—”

“You are not ready. Your magic is not ready.”

Miriam thinks, not for the first time, that she doesn't know how she feels about this version of Gale anymore. Sometimes he comes to her cloaked in flesh and blood, and for a few precious moments it's easy enough to pretend things are the way they've always been, but the illusion always shatters eventually. It leaves her feeling off-balance, melancholic even. She isn't naive enough to think nothing at all would have changed between them, not in the least; she just hadn't considered that she would still be alive — and still mortal — to see it come to pass.

“You can't keep me locked up in your gilded palace for the rest of eternity, Gale.”

“Why not?”

Miriam wants to beat on the walls in frustration. “Because you know me!” she says desperately. “You know how much this is killing me!”

The silence stretches on a beat too long to be comfortable. “You are not going anywhere,” he says finally. The door vanishes from the wall.

---

The passage of time is different in Eileanar. She ventures out of the palace from time to time — this much, she is allowed, though only under supervision from a rather taciturn wizard who refuses to speak to her in anything other than Thayan. She knows she's been here too long when she realizes she's begun to understand him.

His name is Ruzhazny Kest, and in life he'd been a necromancer-turned-transmuter who had discovered in his youth that he vastly preferred working with objects than flesh and bone. She's found the quickest way to shut down a conversation is to ask if he's ever been a Red Wizard. It's become a bit of an experiment to her now, to see how far she can string him along for information before dropping the question that will ultimately make him clam up tighter than a patriar’s purse.

She's honestly and truly so fucking bored.

She's given up hiding the mark of Karsus’ orb on her chest. She'd cloaked herself at first when visiting the City of Gold, unsure of how it would be received if she strolled about wearing Gale's holy symbol like a badge of honor. When Gale had discovered what she'd been doing, he'd all but commanded her to display it. She was his love, his muse, his very own light of creation; and he'd waxed poetic over it for what had felt like hours. It was an honor she would bear with pride.

Of course, she'd refused, purely out of principle. Miriam Taveric had never been a woman who'd been content blindly following orders, and she certainly wasn't about to start now.

Then she'd discovered it would simply glow through anything she covered it with, be it mundane or magical. The first glamor she'd attempted had backfired and only made the thing glow brighter.

“Why,” he'd asked in exasperation, “do you insist on disobeying me at every turn?”

“If you remembered even a fraction of who I was, you'd know the answer to that,” she'd spat bitterly.

And so she wanders about the city these days, Ruzhazny in tow, draped in the finest silks, all cut in revealing ways that elegantly frame the claim he's staked on her soul. If she's going to flaunt it, after all, she's going to do it right.

---

He comes to her in the dead of an illusory night. “My love,” he murmurs apologetically. “Won't you look at me?”

“Depends,” she says. She means it to be bitter. It only comes out weary and resigned. “Am I looking at you as your lover, your pet, or your trophy?”

He actually flinches at that, and for another brief moment he looks painfully human again. “I am sorry for the way I have treated you.”

She hates that she immediately suspects he only wants something from her. She hates the way his need for control has soured the way she'd once wanted nothing in the world more than to spend eternity tangled in his arms.

“Miri,” he whispers. “Please look at me.”

He asks, and so she acquiesces. There is moonlight streaming through the window, and he's so painfully, achingly beautiful. He wears sorrow like a veil, and for the first time in a long time she finds herself craving what's beneath.

“What's become of us, Gale?” she asks softly.

“You are more precious to me than my entire kingdom,” he says. He gathers her to his chest and she lets herself fall into the familiarity of his embrace. “And I fear,” he whispers, “that I may have broken something in you.”

She doesn't know what to say to that. She can't refute it, because it's true, but it isn't as though he'd done it on purpose. Nor Eleanor.

She'd been little more than particulate matter for a hundred years. How were either of them supposed to know she'd come back with chaos still dwelling in her veins? How would anyone have predicted the Netherese magic holding her very essence together would be so violently in opposition to it?

She tells him as much, but it doesn't seem to serve as much consolation.

“Eleanor is close to a breakthrough,” he murmurs. “You will see the material plane again — and her — soon enough.”

“Promise me,” she whispers into his shoulder. She clings to him, a lump in her throat and an ache in her chest she can't blame on her mark. Here, she is safe, protected from Mystra's wrath — and that is what it must be, the way her flesh, blood, and bones are thrashed about in arcane madness that cannot be fixed on the material plane even with divine intervention. Here, at least, she is stable. Whole. Maybe she could learn to be happy.

“I love you,” he says softly. “None of this would have been possible without you.”

“But you can't promise to fix me.”

“Trust me, Miri,” he says firmly. “Please.”

It is not in a god's nature to beg, just as it isn't in her nature to obey. It seems they are both bending the rules these days.

Maybe just this once she can make her peace with that.