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"There's someone up ahead," Astarion murmurs, interrupting a rousing conversation between Karlach and Wyll regarding demon slaying.
"What kind of someone?" Tavares asks, frowning. This close to the goblin camp, there's an equal chance of friend or foe; they could even be another infected, another person to draw into their strange little adventuring party.
"Looks to be human, fourties or fifties, male... too fine of clothes to be from here."
And Tav sees him in the distance before Astarion can finish his thought. His blood runs cold - doesn't matter how long he's been out, he can still feel the heat of the hells on the back of his neck as soon as he catches the cambion's eye.
Fuck.
Fuck.
"Stay here," he mutters, stepping past both Astarion and Shadowheart to march up to Raphael, innocently examining his nails as if he's just on a casual outing to the middle of ass-fuck nowhere. He looks up as Tav's shadow passes over his face, and smiles. "What the fuck do you want."
"Now, that's not a very polite way to greet someone, is it?" Raphael purrs, standing up to his full height, just a few inches taller than himself.
He grinds his teeth. Seven years. Seven years, and he still puppets him around like a marionette. "Hello, Raphael. What do you want."
"To offer you a way out, little mouse."
Footsteps crunch in the dirt behind him, and all at once he feels the heat of Karlach at his back. "Alright?" Karlach asks, half to Tav and half to Raphael.
"Old acquaintance," Tav grits out.
"A reunion, then? What would suit the occasion?" Raphael ponders, like a bad actor in a play, tapping a finger to his chin. "A lullaby, perhaps?"
"That doesn't even make sense-"
"The mouse smiled brightly; it outfoxed the cat," Raphael continues, slowly making eye contact with Tav. "Then came down the claw... and that, love, was that."
That, love, was that. Crooned out to you before you're dumped back into the city of your youth-
Tav digs his nails into his palm, trying to stop the stream of memories before they become shared. Raphael catches the movement, and chuckles to himself. "They do know how to write them in Cormyr, don't they?"
"What do you want from me?" Tav asks, working his jaw to keep it from clenching too obviously. Karlach's already on edge, he doesn't need her swinging at Raphael and getting them both in worse trouble.
"You're tense, aren't you?" he drawls. "Must be the surroundings. Rather lonesome. Middle of nowhere. One feels so... exposed."
He moves to click his fingers, and by panicked instinct, Tav goes to grab him. He's too late- already being swirled away from the forests and glades they're in towards something worse, hotter, meaner-
He stumbles forward, bumping into the dining table in the central room of his bloody House of Hope, and he goes still. "Tav?" Karlach asks, her voice wavering slightly with the same edge of panic he feels stabbing through his heart.
"Take us back, now," Lae'zel demands, hand already going for her blade.
"And deny you all the honor of my hospitality?" Raphael drawls.
"Where are we?" Shadowheart asks, already turning to Tav; he couldn't answer her if he tried, throat already closing up from the sulfur and the stinking rot of his memories. So much for being a bard, a talker, a charmer. Can't even open his mouth from the smell. Stupid little mouse.
"The House of Hope," Raphael answers for him, arms spread wide as he shows off his grandiosity. "Where the tired come to rest, and the famished come to feed... lavishly."
Same stupid spiel, barely changed in seven years. "Are these theatrics leading somewhere?" Astarion snaps, folding his arms over his chest.
"Are you not entertained?"
"Cut to the chase," Tav manages, looking up just long enough to glare at the man standing before them all.
He sighs, acting ever the beleaguered host. "If we must." He turns to face Karlach, and hums, as if it's a hypothetical question, "What's better than a devil you don't know?"
He raises his hand in another spell, drops the humanoid illusion he wears to reveal his true form - winged, horned, red-skinned and dramatic. "A devil you do."
"Fuck," Karlach mutters, as Wyll breathes out a quiet "hollering Hells." The dragonborn takes that as the time for action, drawing his blade. "Stop, stop, stop," Tav blurts out, going to grab his arm. "You won't win this fight-"
"The little mouse is right," Raphael calls out. "And besides, I'm here to help, not harm."
"I'm not making a deal with you," he calls back. "I'm not an idiot, there's- no good that can come to me from this."
"Then don't," the cambion chuckles. "Try to cure yourself. Shop around - beg, borrow, and steal. Exhaust every possibility until none are left. And when hope has been whittled down to the very marrow of despair... that's when you'll come knocking on my door."
"I'm not going to come crawling to your doorstep," Tavares says slowly, trying to make himself sound secure, steady, sure. "Take us back. Our association is done."
"By all means, bite the hand that feeds you, while you still have teeth," Raphael replies. Then he approaches, a man who owns his home and will feel no fear inside of it, stepping closer until he can take Tav's chin in his hands and examine him, like a piece of fucking meat. "All those pretty little symptoms - sundering skin, dissolving guts - they haven't manifested yet, have they? One might say you're a paragon of luck."
He snaps his head straight, forces the tiefling to look him in the eye. "I'll be there when it runs out, Tavares."
With another snap of his fingers, they're back outside the ruined village, exactly where they were not twenty minutes ago, out of the Hells. Tav takes a step back, and digs his nails into his palms until he stops shaking. Raphael is a trickster, a devil, a beguiler, but he's not a liar. He waits for the right moment to hunt, waits until all hope is truly, honestly gone before he steps in, corners his prey before he strikes, because he hates losing a deal when he smells it.
Damn him. Damn it all. They're going to become mind flayers.
By the time they get back to camp that night, Tav has already made a beeline for his tent.
He's already pulled out his stash of shitty ale he'd found in the goblin camp, probably not poisoned but at this rate he doesn't care if it is, anything to take his mind off of the day, the ache in his back, his chest, his brain.
Raphael. Here. Again.
Fuck.
The last time he'd actually seen him... shit, it must have been when he got his job. Dropped off at Rivington, nothing to his name except a violin and his soul, given an address and told to find the Caress and that he'd be taken care of there. A trick, the rug pulled out from under him for the last time. Punishment for not giving up his soul, he thinks - Raphael hates losing, and Tav had been a thorn in his side for two whole years.
Stupid little mouse. He'd been so scared when he went to the House of Hope. Backed into a corner, no hope of survival. No skills to speak of, no jobs that would take him. He'd even tried sleeping rough, but then the Fist came through and told him to get out, and Rivington meant he was sleeping in the mud and getting too sick to stand. And he'd tried so hard to be aware - hypervigilant of every statement, every question, every piece of paper slid in front of him. He'd kept his soul safe, but then-
Someone knocks on the pole holding up his tent. He jolts, almost turns to blast whoever's about to hurt him-
"Just me, Tav, you're alright," Karlach says, holding up her hands. "You missed dinner. I saved you a bowl."
He glances back out the tent, and sure as shit, they're already setting up for watch. "Shit. Sorry, Kar."
She takes a seat across from him, passes him the bowl of stew, and lets him tuck in uninterrupted for a moment. He's gone through two bottles in the last however-many hours, he didn't even realize.
So... Her tadpole brushes against his. You know him, then? That Raphael bastard?
Unfortunately.
He called you mouse.
He hesitates. He does.
Her eyes settle on his cheek, the scrawled Infernal word just along his cheekbone. Is he why...
He laughs, seeing you standing across the banquet hall from him. Then he's rising, approaching, holding a quill in his hand, and you flinch away as he starts towards your face. He grabs your chin, holds you firm as the quill comes down on your cheek, and as he writes, it burns his mark into your skin. "There," he says, turning your face back and forth as he examines it, as you cry and scrabble to break the hold. "Timid little mouse, aren't you."
Tav leans back, closing his eyes, breaks the memory before it can go any farther. "Tavares-"
"Don't worry about it, Karlach. It's just- it's nothing. All he has over me is fear. That's it."
"You promise?"
He looks at her, golden eyes wide and worried. Fuck, he can't lie to her. He can't. It's Karlach, it's his sister, he can't look her in the eye and say-
"I promise, that's it. Just intimidation and a tattoo."
Relief fills her face.
He's a horrible brother.