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“For what it’s worth, Gale, I’m sorry.”
Those words pierced his chest, his stomach dropped. Of course she was sorry. She looked sorry. Gale had asked Tav for some private moments away from the camp and their companions. They needed to talk about the two of them, about what was happening to them, and also about him, the pale elf, whom she had been getting closer and closer to. Gale knew already, before she even had to say anything, that this conversation would be the end of them. The end of Tav and Gale, the end of these nights spent gazing at the stars, wondering what life had in store for them next.
“You can tell me now - who is it to be? Me, or him?” He still had hope, a tiny hope that she would choose him. But then she said it, ”I’m sorry”, and suddenly he felt stupid to have ever believed that she would choose him in the first place. He had seen the way Astarion and her looked at each other, from across the campfire, he had heard them walking away from camp in the middle of the night, carefully trying not to be noticed by the others. They had shared more than Gale had ever shared with her. And yet, he couldn’t forget about the moments that they had spent together, however few they may be. When he showed her the Weave, and what one could do with it, and when their minds had merged as one. Back then, he had closed his eyes and he had seen the pretty picture she had painted behind her lids: a kiss that she planted on his lips, his hands on her waist, a beautiful sunset in the background. It had looked heavenly albeit a bit cliché. Now he couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to make that beautiful vision fade away, replaced in her mind by a future shared with the vampire spawn.
Gale thought Tav would have wanted to distance herself from him after what had happened, after she had rejected him — he still couldn’t admit that this had been, indeed, a rejection — but she didn’t. She still asked him to tag along, to follow her on whatever adventures they were having. He was there with her — and with the elf too — when they stormed Moonrise Tower and defeated Ketheric Thorm. He was there too when they stopped Cazador’s hellish ritual. He witnessed Astarion’s turmoil, his hesitation on whether or not to go through with the ritual and sacrifice hundreds of innocents to gain immense powers. And he had seen Tav, walking slowly towards him, trying to push him in the right direction. In the end Astarion listened to her and freed the vampire spawns. At the time Gale had felt proud of the vampire, proud of how he had fought all of his urges, all of his wishes for power, and how he had won. In the back of his mind, however, he couldn’t help but wonder if that really was what Tav wanted for a life. Was she ready to spend the remainder of her days living in darkness, just so she could stay with Astarion? Gale would never have admitted it out loud, but he believed he could give her a better life than that. But what did he have to offer, actually? Gale was going to die and he knew it, they all knew it. Mystra had commended him to do so, to kill himself — and everyone — to destroy the Absolute. Tav had promised him, promised they would find another way to destroy the Elder Brain, one that wouldn’t involve Gale sacrificing himself. Whenever she brought up the subject, he would smile and tell her not to worry, reassure her that he wasn’t going to blindly obey Mystra’s orders unless he was absolutely sure there was no other way to defeat the Absolute, but deep down he already knew. His last hope was to find the Annals of Karsus, to obtain powers that would allow him to defy the Gods themselves. This was a tiny hope — yet another one — but he himself didn’t truly believe he had it in him to go against Mystra’s will.
After a while, he had gotten used to seeing Tav and Astarion as a couple. Tav always had the decency to kiss the elf when Gale wasn’t looking. They would leave camp to have their private conversations or any kind of fun couples have when they’re alone together. The wizard was too busy thinking about The Absolute and the Crown of Karsus to really focus on how heartbroken he was. He was used to it anyway: first Mystra, then Tav, he couldn’t remember the last time in his life he wasn’t heartbroken. Tav still accepted him as a friend however, and she had promised to help him find the Annals , that was everything he could have hoped for.
He thought he could live the rest of his life — however short it might be — just like this. That was until he found her, Tav, one morning, kneeling down next to Astarion’s empty bed. Gale didn’t think much of it at first, the vampire was probably still out, hunting for rats or whatever animals he could feed on in the city. But hours passed, everyone was already ready to leave, but Astarion was not coming back and Tav wouldn’t leave her place next to his bed. He walked closer to her, ready to ask if anything was wrong, when he noticed her shoulders trembling. She was holding a letter in her hands, and he could recognize the vampire’s fancy handwriting. Gale motioned to Shadowheart to go talk to the crying woman, as the two of them were close — maybe they could have been best friends had they met under different circumstances — and he knew she would confide in her more easily than she would in him.
“… Tav?” Shadowheart approached carefully.
Tav seemed to snap back to reality, she suddenly stood up and faced them. Her eyes were red and puffy.
“Sorry”, she apologized, her voice hoarse from not having spoken in a while. “I’ll be ready in a minute.” She walked back to her own bed and began packing her stuff. Not even half an hour later, she was ready to leave for the day, smiling at everyone and trying her best to pretend nothing had happened.
“Is Astarion not coming with us?” Shadowheart asked, uncertain.
“No he…” Tav cleared her throat. “He won’t be traveling with us anymore.” She began to walk out of their room in the Elfsong Tavern immediately as these words left her mouth, clearly not wanting to elaborate. Everyone was left discombobulated, wondering what in the Hells could have happened to have made Astarion leave so suddenly, in the middle of the night, without even a goodbye. But Tav wouldn’t speak about it, and they all knew it hurt her more than it hurt them, so they respected her choice not to talk and didn’t press her further.
Their day was nothing out of ordinary, as unusual as the ordinary may be. They kept exploring the city of Baldur’s Gate, trying to find the future victims of that convoluted murder scheme they had found out about before. They talked to people, tried to gather informations about Gortash, listened to civilians gossiping about whatever topics they were interested in: the threat of the Absolute, the Hag Survivors Group, all of these things happening in a city filled with life and animation. Gale noticed, however, how Tav would always look back whenever they walked past someone with light hair, or how she would ask innkeepers and merchants about whether or not they had seen a pale but elegant silver haired man recently, when she thought the rest of the group wasn’t listening anymore. He didn’t need to rely on the tadpole to know exactly what she was thinking: “he might still be in the city, maybe we could find him.”
Days passed, they were making great progress on their investigation, but Astarion was still nowhere to be found. He had vanished, entirely. They were short on gold at the time, but Tav still insisted that they all came back to the Elfsong Tavern every night. She didn’t need say why, again, because they all knew this was the last place they had seen Astarion, and probably the first he would look for had he decided to come back. Gale wasn’t too devastated by the vampire’s departure — at best he was mildly annoyed to know that their little group would have one less ally by their side to fight the Absolute. He felt troubled to see Tav in such a state, obviously hurting, but not much more than that. A part of him, one he didn’t let speak often, felt that she deserved this, she deserved to be in pain for having chosen an obviously unstable and hysterically murderous vampire over him. He would never tell her, however, she didn’t need him to rub salt in her wounds like this. He wouldn’t have had the occasion to tell her anyway, because Tav didn’t speak about her pain. Not with Gale, not with Shadowheart, not with anyone. She would sometimes leave their room in the tavern for hours on in the middle of the night, but she would never acknowledge it in the following day, when asked about it. “Don’t we have more important things to worry about? The Absolute doesn’t care about how we spend our nights.” She would say, smiling as always.
The Absolute may have had better things to care about, but Gale did not, and so he followed her out one night. He tried his best not to be seen nor heard, but that proved too difficult and he ended up walking so far behind Tav that he lost her sight. When he found her again, she was in a graveyard, sitting down in front of a tomb, her arms wrapped around her knees and her head resting on them. Gale tried to step closer to read the tomb’s engraving without her noticing, but once again he had never been skilled at sneaking up on people. She quickly stood up.
“Who’s there?”
There was hope in her voice and in her eyes, and that hope was crushed in an instant when she noticed Gale was the one who had disturbed her, and only him. She didn’t say anything. She quietly sat back down in front of the tomb.
Gale sighed, and sat next to her. Now that he was close, he could read the engraving: “Astarion Ancunin, 229 - 268 DR, 498 DR -”. “Of course”, he thought. “Of course she would wait for him here.” There was a flower on the stone, a fresh one she probably placed there just before Gale interrupted her waiting. The fresh flower was resting on top of a small pile of withered ones. A flower for each night she had spent waiting for him. Gale wanted to say something but he couldn’t find the right words. Should he even say anything? Hadn’t he done enough by troubling her and giving her false hopes? But now that he was there…
“He resents me.” Tav spoke first. Gale remained silent. “He left me a letter, you know? He…” She cleared her throat. She was beginning to tear up. “He says that he believes he should have gone through with Cazador’s ritual, that he should have ascended… He says he was blinded by my words, and that he resents me for manipulating him into giving up freedom and power. His words, not mine.”
It took Gale all of his self control not to sneer. Of course he would resent her for that. Of course he hadn’t changed at all. He was still that power hungry selfish prick he had always been.
“It’s been weeks now.” Tav spoke again. “I still hope he… I still hope he might change his mind and come back.” She looked down at the tombstone, as if Astarion was magically going to appear after hearing her words. But he didn’t, he wasn’t coming back and he had made it clear.
“For what it’s worth, Tav, I’m sorry.” The words were out of Gale’s mouth before he even realized he was repeating what she had told him back then. Tav chuckled ruefully.
“You must think I’m a fool.” There was sorrow in her voice. “Only a fool would think that a life with an elven vampire was possible.”
“I think it’s beautiful.” He didn’t know why he had said that. She looked at him, surprised, their eyes met and he had no choice but to continue. “It’s beautiful to pursue something that might seem impossible, to be ready for a life full of hardships so long as it’s a life spent with the person you love.”
A faint blush appeared on Tav’s cheeks. Gale cleared his throat. This was neither the time nor the place to think about how beautiful she was in that moment. He tried to focus on what he was saying, he tried to make sense.
“You loved him dearly, and it would take a blind man not to notice he loved you just as much.” He looked away. “Sometimes… Sometimes things are just not meant to be. There might be things you cannot move past, and feelings that you cannot ignore no matter how much you love each other…” Mystra’s face flashed before his eyes. “Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. Some relationships, no matter how beautiful they are, are not meant to flourish. Sometimes all you can do is cherish the warm memories you have of you two together.”
He felt stupid. These were obviously not the words she wanted to hear. She was heart broken, relying on a tiny hope that the love of her life might come back to keep going, and he was telling her to give it up. Had he been alone he would have smacked himself in the head.
“Thank you.”
Her soft voice startled him. Why was she thanking him? He must have looked confused, because she immediately added, smiling: “You said that he loved me. That you could see it. Thank you for that. For the past weeks I’ve had nothing but doubts. Why would he leave like this if he loved me? I thought that maybe all this time I was the only one loving him, that he had only used me to get what he wanted, and now that I had refused to give it to him he left, because he couldn’t keep pretending.”
Her eyes were red again. Oh, how Gale wanted nothing more but to wipe away her tears, to make her forget about her pain, about Astarion.
“I truly believe that he loved you more than he had ever loved anyone before.” He had to shut his mouth quickly as he was about to add “… aside from himself.” She wouldn’t have liked to hear that.
She smiled, again. There was sorrow in her eyes, but she stood up, stretched her arms and shook her head. She gave one last look at the elf’s tombstone before turning away from it. “I think we should go back.”
The day after, Tav was the first to be up in the morning, urging everyone to hurry and get ready to leave, as they had so much to do that day. She seemed to be back to normal — or, at the very least, the usual. Gale didn’t know what a normal Tav acted like after all, and sometimes he wondered if they would have gotten along if they had met under different circumstances, with no tadpoles and no Absolute involved. They made progress on the murder investigation — actually, they managed to stop the murderer, catching him in the act right as he was about to slit his next victim’s throat. Tav fought vigorously, never hesitating to run straight into danger to make sure that everybody else would be safe, knowing that Shadowheart was never far behind to heal her wounds. He admired that part of her, how she never seemed to fear getting hurt, as if the possibility of her own demise never crossed her mind. The fight had been a difficult one, and Tav didn’t come out of it unscathed. Gale never understood why but he enjoyed seeing her like this, covered in blood — mostly not her own — and taking some time to recover. He handed her a healing potion, and she smiled, the kind of smile only she knew the secret of, the kind that made Gale’s heart skip a beat.
He didn’t want to hope. He didn’t want to overthink what every little gesture, every single smile and look could mean. He had to remind himself every day that she was still heartbroken, that she couldn’t have healed from such a deep wound in such a short time, that she was just being friendly and trying her best to act normal. But deep within his heart there was, once again, a tiny glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, with Astarion gone, then he had his chances with her again, and it simply wouldn’t die. It made him uncomfortable too, he didn’t like the idea of being used by her to forget about the vampire. Yet, he wanted nothing more but to replace him in her heart, he wanted it so much that even if it meant being used for a while, he was ready to endure it.
Their quest for the Netherstones was coming along well now that they had caught the culprit of the violent murders, and each day they were getting closer and closer to finding Orin. This realization came with a anxious feeling of impeding doom. Killing Orin wouldn’t be an easy task, they all knew it, and they all knew they might not all make it out alive. This only made Gale want to spend more time with Tav. If he had to die fighting Orin, he didn’t want to go his heart filled with regrets. He wanted to talk to her, to know everything there was to know about her, and he wanted her to know him too, to understand him. Before he realized it, they had been spending most of their nights talking to each other for hours on before going to sleep. They talked about his life in Waterdeep, about Tara, about Mystra too. Tav told him about her life before she was abducted, about her family and friends. They never talked about Astarion, or about them, about the spark that had existed between them before she chose the vampire over him.
He had tried so very hard not to hope for anything, but each smile of hers, each witty joke she made, everything in the way she acted only made him want her more. He knew his feelings for her had never left — how could they have when they were spending so much time with each other every day? That glimmer of hope that simply wouldn’t die was only getting bigger and bigger with each night they spent talking, with each look she gave him. He loved her, so dearly, and so much that he was willing to do anything for her.
It was one of these nights when he finally found the courage to ask her: “Why him? Why him and not me?”. They would usually spend these nights on the balcony of their room in the inn, where they could speak as loudly as they wanted without having to fear waking their comrades up. That time, both of them had been quietly chatting, drinking wine and looking at the flickering lights emanating from the city’s many houses. Their conversation had died out, and Gale suddenly blurted out the words before even realizing what he was saying. Tav looked at him, visibly surprised that he would bring up that subject.
“Oh Gale…” She frowned.
“I know, I know, I’m sorry. I just thought…” He sighed. “We never really talked about this, and frankly it’s been eating me alive all this time. I understand this is not something pleasant to talk about, but I do have a right to know, don’t you think?”
“This is…” She looked away and took a sip of her drink. “Are you sure you want to talk about this?”
Gale felt relieved, somehow, that she appeared to be ready — or at the very least not entirely unwilling — to talk. This question had never left his mind since that fateful day a few months ago. Why him? Or rather, what was so bad, so rotten to the core about Gale that she’d choose anyone, even a vampire over him? He felt a hint of dread about what was about to come, about the words he was going to hear, but he also knew that he needed to hear them. He nodded, silently waiting for her answer.
“The truth is…” She fell silent. She appeared lost in thoughts for a moment, trying to find the right words to express her feelings. She raised her head to look at the stars. “I loved you, Gale, I really did.” His heart skipped a beat. She had loved him? Such a strong feeling? “You made me feel cherished, important… You made me feel alive.” Tav looked back at him, trying to find his gaze, but he was averting his eyes. He didn’t want her to see just how much her words moved him. For a second he wished that she would stop there, that she would leave it at that, yet he knew that what was coming was inevitable. She spoke again: “But…”
He braced himself, ready for the pain she was about to inflict on him.
“I knew I would always come second in your heart. I knew I could never compare to Mystra. I noticed, you know, the way your eyes light up when you speak about her. I know I will never occupy your mind as much as she does. I will… I will never be enough for you, Gale.”
He wasn’t expecting that, to say the least. He had great difficulties registering what she had just said. She didn’t choose Astarion because he was better. She didn’t choose him because was more worthy of her. She chose him because she felt inferior, not enough for a man such as Gale. Her words shed a new light on the time they had spent together. When Gale told her about his history with Mystra, he only wished to show Tav his more vulnerable side, to let her know of his own shortcomings, but what she saw was a man who had fallen in love with a Goddess, and who had somehow managed to make her love him back. Through his words she saw Mystra’s beauty, her radiance, her greatness, and most of all she saw that Gale was still thinking about her, every day, even now. He told her about how Mystra had punished him, and she saw how he had been ready to go through the hells and back to impress her. Of course she would never feel enough. It all made sense to him now, and he felt ever so stupid to never have noticed before.
Tav cleared her throat, clearly embarrassed by Gale’s silence. “Of course I… I love Astarion too. I grew to love him. I knew he was only playing with me at first, and so was I, but soon enough I found myself falling for him, just as I had fallen for you. And when you presented me with a choice, back then, I began to think about… About the future, our future. All I could see in my mind were pictures of you growing tired of me, a mere mortal unable to feel the Weave. I would see Mystra forgiving you, and you leaving me without even a second thought to embrace her again…” She chuckled. “I am aware of the irony in that. In the end, you are not the one who left.”
“But Tav, I…”
He wanted to tell her. He wanted to tell her about how she was the first woman since Mystra who had made him feel love again, about how sometimes he would realize that he hadn’t thought about the Goddess in days — weeks even, maybe — just because his mind was filled with thoughts of Tav. He wanted to tell her how crushed he had felt when she rejected him, how it was just as painful as when Mystra cast him away.
But he was too late, wasn’t he?
Gale stared at his glass of wine as if, if he looked at it hard enough, he would maybe find the right words to say. He was unable to face her, to look at her. The truth was, he felt ashamed of himself in that moment. He had always seen himself as the victim of a unjust choice that led to his heartbreak, while the object of his love was having the time of her life with somebody else right under his nose. He had never once stopped to consider how Tav might have been feeling. He had always considered that she had been the one to make the choice and therefor she couldn’t have hurt as much as he did. And he was probably right, it must not have been as hard for her as it had been for him, but he never once thought that he may have brought it all upon himself.
“I’m sorry.” He sighed.
“You have nothing to apologize for.”
“I do. I never meant to make you feel that way, to make you feel like a second choice I’d go for only because Mystra cast me out. I never even once considered you as a replacement for—”
She interrupted him: “It’s all in the past, now.”
She was smiling, the kind of smile one has when reminiscing about beautiful yet sorrowful memories.
“Yes but I still—” Gale finally looked at her. “I still love you, Tav.” He sounded pleading, almost begging her not to forget about what she had felt for him before.
There, he had finally said it. They looked at each other in silence for what felt both like a second and an eternity. He couldn’t make out what she was thinking about in that moment, she looked surprised, dazzled, hopeful even, but also defeated.
Gale frowned and spoke again: “I don’t… This is not… I’m not asking you for anything, right now.” He paused. “With… Everything that’s been going on, the multiple predicaments we find ourselves in,” he gestured vaguely with his hand, “I don’t know how much I, you, or any of us have left to live. I wanted to tell you, I wanted you to understand, so that if I died tomorrow I would do so without any regrets. I mean, I would still have many regrets, but at least not this one.”
She chuckled. His poor attempt at lighting up the mood seemed to have worked somehow and he was relieved. Tav took another sip of wine, and seemed to relax in her chair a little bit. They both remained silent, watching the city as it fell asleep, letting their words, their feelings, float in the air between them.
“Well…” When Tav spoke again, her voice was soft, yet serious. “Mystra has sent you on a suicide mission, and Astarion is… well, gone. Maybe it’s about time we admitted that our first choices were the wrong ones.”
Silence. He didn’t dare interrupt her. She took one final sip of wine to give herself courage before she continued.
“Maybe… You and I could give our second choice a chance?”
She timidly reached out a hand towards him.
Gale smiled as he took it.