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What the Hells just happened.
What. In. The. Nine. Hells.
Sterne stood there, completely, utterly, unable to process what just unfurled beneath her eyes. At this point, the muscles in her legs must have been fueled by pure habit, because she did not feel them at all and if she had, she'd be face first in the hay.
She was positive she'd dissolve to another plane if anything moved right now.
She was scared that her brain did not catch up on what had happened, because none of whatever this was had felt real. She'd seen people dying before, of course, even lost count of the sheer number of her victims since the beginning of the Mindflayer nonsense. Heard people crying for mercy, death, anything really as their limbs were being torn off, even.
But this? This was a first. Not people's throats being slit and hearing their blood force its way up their oesophagus and trachea to the rhythm of their fading heartbeat, mind you, Astarion did that on a tenday basis.
The problem lied in the fact that the body lying before her was that of a young girl.
Yenna's blood slowly stained the hay as Sterne couldn't emotionally process the last ten minutes. Thick, probably still lukewarm blood seeped from her neck, where Orin previously held her dagger disguised as Lae'zel.
As through a haze, colours started to fade from her vision, the bright orange of the child's hair more of a dull copper, the accusatory red of the scene bleeding into a desaturated pink. Vaguely, Sterne could feel her body reaching out to the child's, barely brushing her fingers against the rough texture of her clothing. The girl's life was slowly evading her body as her muscles twitched and spasmed for the last time, and the sound of her choking on her own blood ultimately but slowly came to a halt.
Too late the elf tried to shake the girl, too late she called for her name. It was like fog had seeped through her eyes, her ears, her nose, nesting itself in between the ridges of her brain - preventing it to react properly (which would have been to fetch Shadowheart and ask the cleric for a healing spell). Instead, there she was, left swimming in thick puddles of shock, grasping at the makeshift shirt of a dead child, desperately trying to get a reaction (anything, really) out of her.
Gods knew how long Sterne stood crouched next to Yenna as she mechanically shook that tiny, frail, pale, dead (and still morbidly warm) body of hers.
She thinks that about twenty minutes have passed when she starts whispering comforting words in Elvish.
Mindlessly, her hand had found the girl's hair and began drawing the soothing patterns she remembered from her own childhood (despite those memories being a little more than two centuries old at this point) on her scalp. The urge to be gentle with the soft skin beneath the pads of her fingers was almost as urgent as the other urge she felt, which was to let herself fall backwards in the hay and cry, or howl. She's not sure what kind of noise will come out of her mouth when she'll stop singing (more like muttering, really) lullabies long forgotten by anyone but herself.
As of right now, butchering the rythm of the songs that helped her sleep back when she was still a little girl is, weirdly, enough to keep the growing cold numb feeling at bay. Well, a bit.
Ultimately, after the sixth lullaby, Sterne thinks what is supposed to be the skin of her cheek is dampening. It's quite hard to tell when all she felt was her left hand carding through unkempt copper curls, the rest of her body being as numb as she feels in her chest.
No, the dam was breaching.
The muttering-singing slowly shifted into a gut-wrenching, primal sob without her input or knowledge. Her hand had finally stilled when she felt the crushing waves of sadness crashing down on her. Gods, she fought the avatar of Myrkul and so much other threats to her life in the past few months, and what got her crying like a babe was a little girl's death? She felt so bad.
So, so bad.
Guilt clawed at the inside of her chest, pushed her ribs and the occasional organ outwards to settle close to and around her heart. Her heart, her heart, her heart- it hurt so much. Blinding hot white pain, squeezing and turning it into an unnatural shape no organ should ever have. Guilt for Yenna, and all the innocent lives she saw bleed out of corpses in haunting cries when she couldn't save them.
Shame was hot and wet in her throat and on her cheeks, leaking moisture right onto her face as her jaw ached from the weird angle she openened it at, half open put pulled inwards in a patheric attenpt at shutting herself up. Shame pouring out of and into her, shame of not being observant enough and not having spotted Orin hidden among her dear ones. Shame of herself, twisting its way in between every one vertebrae, of not and never being enough. Not even enough to stop the murder of a little girl who begged for a place to sleep and a tad of affection.
Curiously anger answered no call, for it simply didn't have a place in the elaborate mix of self wallowing pity Sterne brewed for herself on bad days. Anger was at most what kept her going forward when nothing else worked, never a reason she hit herself on the head for. Of course she was angry at Orin, but right now she was essentially miserable, not furious.
(Later, killing Orin proved itself to be cathartic enough.)
More and more tears flowed unceremoniously out of her red and puffy eyes, unrelentlessly. They showed no sign of stopping in the immediate future, just as the howling. Sterne lied, shook by unending full-body tremors, for an indetermined amount of time in the blood-soaked hay, truly not knowing what to do with herself or the situation.
Then, she vaguely recalls someone finding her splayed out on the ground, face drenched with salt water and armour stained crimson. Maybe they slipped her out of it, gently (or as gently as possible) unbuckled the metal plates from one another, surely they carefully washed her face with a soft cloth they came to find in her stuff in the first place warmed with lukewarm water, undoubtedly they sat her down on a log and held a slice of bread with honey in front of her face, encouraging her to eat at least someting. That's the part she recalls best, because the honey tasted so sweet and nice on her tongue, otherwise heavier than lead in her mouth and throat.
(What she doesn't recall is the horror on Astarion's features and in his demeanour when he finds her bawling her pretty green eyes out next to a body, his helplessness when he calls for Karlach to help him get her up, his awkward attempt at soothing her while he unfastens the leather straps of her armour, the concern he isn't especially ready to admit he felt when he had to coax her into eating her favourite snack bite after bite. He had still been skittish with affection even after Moonrise Towers when he was on the receiving end, so being the comforting one was one scary bridge too far- a bridge he'd been forced to cross when Karlach pointedly prompted him to do a little more than sit Sterne on a piece of wood and turn the other way. He had eventually complied, falsely upset about "having to babysit our leader" when not a single word sounded true, thinly concealed worry soaking his sentences.)
(Later, less later than with Orin but later nonetheless, when they get to Cazador and Astarion breaks down after killing him, he is silently thankful that Sterne treats him with the same, if not more, care and uncalled-for reverence than him now.)
As she fell asleep mere hours later that evening, she was certain she was cradled like she was someone's dearest. She let herself enjoy the cool embrace and tightened her grip over the other body under the fabric ceiling of the tent, not really knowing what had happened in the last few hours but content to be snuggly held, as if Astarion was unconsciously uneasy at the thought of her rolling off during her sleep.
She had been so comfortable and tightly hugged that she didn't so much as turn over during the night.