Chapter Text
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
A simple task complicated by the sword sheathed in her abdomen.
How did she end up here? Where was here? A sound, a voice, a scream - calling.
Calling her?
She opened her eyes. The sky was the most beautiful shade of blue. Almost as beautiful as the black of her eyelids. She fought to keep them open.
“Myles? Myles, get up! I forbid you from dying! Myles, Do you hear me?” A silver-haired face broke into her vision. Her eyes blurred too much to see who it was.
“Astarion, move! I can’t see— oh gods.” Another face, also framed by silver hair. It came clearer into focus. Bright green eyes, sharp features. Heart… Shadowheart. She tried to call out to her, but no sound left her lips.
Blue light flashed at her chest.
Again.
Again.
The pain worsened, skin attempting to heal instead re-pierced itself on the blade’s edge. She groaned, trying to swat away whoever was hurting her.
“Ast-Astarion? I think–” her throat caught, suddenly dry as a desert. “I think I’m hurt.”
The elf grasped her hand, pressing a gentle kiss onto her knuckles. “Save your breath, Darling. We’ll fix it.”
She tried to give him a reassuring smile. Her best friend was the most adept healer they had met in their travels. But it didn’t take a cleric to realize that this was not the healing type of injury. She almost laughed at the whole thing, stopped only by the lack of air. Her life began and ended again so soon. Dying in service to the city she nearly destroyed wasn’t the worst way to go. Martyrdom might make a fact like that disappear in the history books.
“Shads?” Myles mustered the voice she had.
The cleric's face was streaked with blood and grime, partitioned by two streams of tears. “Myles, Myles what do I do? What would you try?”
She wished she could put the burden on anyone else. “You know as well as I do that we don’t have spells for this. This–this is nature at work.”
Shadowheart looked her in the eyes, and a realization spilled over her face. “Don’t say it, Myles. Please. Don’t ask me to do it.”
“I give you my permission to rest Shads, may–may the Moonmaiden continue to guide your hand.”
The cleric’s hands immediately shot up to cover the river of tears running down her face. How lucky she was to have friends that would cry for her like this.
But Astarion’s face twisted with anguish, he shook Shadowheart’s shoulder with his freehand. “Don’t stop! Don’t listen to her gods damn it! We have to keep trying.” He turned to her, “We need you alive. I need you alive.”
Shadowheart only looked at him and whispered the answer. “Astarion, I can’t continue healing spells once I’ve been asked to rest. I-I can’t do anything else.” She grasped onto Myles’ hand, and Myles squeezed back weakly.
“Astarion.”
“No! I refuse to accept this. Just hold on. Surely Gale or-”
“Astar—” she coughed blood and quickly lost the little air she had. “Let me get my last words in while I can, damn you!” She tried to yell, but it came out half whisper half bloody gurgle.
For the first time since Cazador, she saw tears slip down his cheeks. She wished she could wipe them away. But there was no strength left to lift her arms.
Myles cleared her throat, trying not to choke on her own blood. “Astarion, you must not let this be the end. You have to continue, to push, and to get better. These people will need a leader. Be that for them. I wish you sunlight. I wish you sunlight always. You’ll find your way back to it, of that I have no doubt. And–and I love you. I have loved you since I saw you. I will love you always. I–I think I’m going to sleep now.” Her eyes fluttered against her best attempts to stay awake.
She felt lips on her lips. “Myles. Myles, we didn’t have enough time. I wanted to be able to kiss these lips forever. I owe you everything. For reopening my heart. For being the hero I prayed for during those 200 years. I—”
Myles couldn’t hear. Couldn’t open her eyes. She heard her pulse in her head and felt the fading beat of her heart.
More time. If only she had more time. If only she had been earlier. She tried to be happy with this end, satisfied with the change she made. But what about the people she couldn’t save? What about the blood on her hands? What waited for her on the other side of death? If only, if only, if only.
Her pulse slowed, her heart silent.
Myles was dead.
So… why was she still aware? Why was everything still dark?
She opened her eyes, something she now had the power to do without searing pain through her chest.
And she was not looking at the sky. Instead, she was looking up at grey stone. It wasn’t rock pressed into her back, but a hard mattress. Is this a dream?
The next thing to register was the lack of her armor. Myles shot up from the bed, launching herself onto the stone floor. She tried to keep her wince silent. Looking down revealed white cotton sleepwear. Her stomach sank, something was deeply wrong.
Myles pulled herself to her feet. And whatever hell she thought she was going to could not compare to the sight of what was before her. Not hellfire, no devils, but a sickeningly familiar stone room. Somewhere she recently revisited.
Fighting the urge to scream, she searched for any chance of this being a terrible nightmare. But she knew this was the Temple of Bhaal. She looked at her arms. So few of the scars she had come to know scattered her skin. But a bump in her front pocket caught her eye. She stuck her hand in and pulled out a piece of parchment.
Scrawled in brown ink: you prayed for a chance to change things. I granted it.
It hit her all at once. Myles was not in the Temple of Bhaal she had been in only days before to slay her sister. No, this was the temple as it had been on her 18th birthday.
15 years ago.