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Despite what anyone might assume about her suave nature, Artemesia had done countless embarrassing things in her lifetime. None that bare repeating-- dear gods, don't make her repeat them-- but none that she could ever hope to erase from history or her mind.
The tricky thing about it was that being a thief-lord and also being incurably awkward didn't exactly go hand-in-hand, so she'd worked very hard to craft her image in her years delving into the dark reaches of criminal enterprise, hiding the parts of herself that would never fit with the parts that ensured her customers would keep coming. Or at least, be afraid enough of her to trust her talents unquestioned.
Gale stripped all those layers away when he'd taught her the ways of channeling the weave. If she'd known such methods of magic were capable of such things, she'd of course never agreed. As it was, Artemesia had let Gale into her mind, worse, her heart, and allowed him a glimpse into her innermost desires.
Pesky things, desires.
Since then, she'd been avoiding him, no way around that, but it seemed that Gale, emboldened by one or more events (a certain orb had recently been dealt with by a certain wizard who gave Gale's annoying qualities a run for their gold), was not going to let the matter go. Or maybe he just found humor in watching her stumble around for purchase in a conversation.
"Alright there, Artemesia?"
Art startled, whirling around from the remains of the shade she'd just obliterated with a frenzied stab, hackles raised. It had gotten a last-minute swipe at her before evaporating. The sensation of being raked across the arm by a cursed undead was, she'd decided, one of the Worst Feelings she'd ever experienced. It was going on her top-ten list. Her bone marrow felt like it was shriveling in on itself, and the skin around the exposed cut looked rather like it wanted to turn into stew. Gods, the Shadow-cursed lands were the worst.
"I'm fine," she said, hiding her arm from view. "No need to worry yourself over me."
"You're not," he said flatly, and grabbed her arm in a surprising moment of stubborn strength, or perhaps he'd merely caught her off-guard. Art hissed as the exposed flesh revealed itself to him, and his face paled. "By the Weave... here." He pulled out a bottle of something, some potion he'd brewed the other day that he'd been sweating over, and unstoppered the cork with his teeth.
"No, I'm fine," she insisted, trying to tug her arm away. "What is that?"
"It's effective against wounds caused by undead," he said, refusing to relinquish her arm. He held up the bottle for her to see the faintly shining liquid within. "It's infused with holy water. Very rare stuff, but I managed to brew a successful batch--"
"You are not going to waste your rare and expensive potions on me, Gale."
"First of all, they are my potions, so I will use them in however a manner that I see fit." Gods, even when he was scolding, his eloquent humor just wouldn't ever abate. "Secondly, I will not take the chance that whatever that thing was, it could turn you like that poor bloak Yonas." His eyes softened, then, and Art thought the sight might have made her melt a little (against her will, mind you). "Artemesia, please hold still while I help you."
Why did he have to say her name like that?
"This will sting-- quite a lot, actually, I do apologize."
But Art was still looking at those tender, dark eyes. Mordenkainon's mind, she could get lost in those eyes, if she let herself. But of course, she could never let herself, because that would mean--
Fire. Scalding, rending, razing fire in her bones and sinews--
The string of curses that flew from Art's mouth was one she would be proud of for a while. And Gale had the audacity to laugh. To laugh like a match struck within the darkness all around them.
"I won't take any of that personally," he said as he bandaged up the wound with gentle, deft hands. Then, and only then, did he release her.
Art rubbed her arm all the way to Last Light Inn, though it was only partly because of the lingering pain.
"I swear, I'm going to wring that sorry wizard's neck," Art said as they continued to make their rounds to check in on familiar faces around Last Light.
"Easy now, Soldier," Karlach said with a hand on her shoulder. "He was just doing what he felt was right."
"I do hope by now he's realized how stupid that was."
Karlach didn't look like she agreed, but kept her mouth closed.
Art was referring, of course, to Rolan, who had abandoned his post at Last Light in search of his siblings, who were, as it turned out, currently captured by the cult of the Absolute. Which was just lovely, really-- Art had been looking for another thing to add to her growing list of things to do before she saved the world.
"Has everyone rested up?" Art asked, rounding the corner to see the rest of the party practically passed out over one another at a few of the tables. Except for Shadowheart, of course, who looked like a child that had just heard they were going out for ice cream.
"Hnghhhh....." was about all she could make out from Astarion. He was face-down on the table. There was shade-goo stuck in his hair.
"They're beat, Art," came a soft voice from the corner, where a faint light emenated. Aella, the unfazed light cleric of the group, was tending to a nasty cut on Wyll's head. Art might have pointed out that Shadowheart was better at healing, but didn't have the energy to navigate whatever it was that went on between those two. Even though Aella's eyes betrayed a worn-down tiredness that had nothing to do with physicality; her magic itself had come under attack in these gods-forsaken lands.
Art crossed her arms, glaring at the cleric. "We're always beat."
"Let them rest." Aella rose, patting Wyll fondly on the cheek before meeting Art. Her voice always had this delicate quality to it, as though she were whispering, even when her voice was raised. Art always attributed it to her noble upbringing, but was also amused at how it contrasted with the raging wildfire that was her magic. Aella regarded her with firm, silver eyes. "You're not yourself either. Gale might have saved you a painful recovery process with that potion, but you're still spent. Rest."
"I'm fine."
"We all know that you mean the opposite of what you say with that tone." She gave a smirk, but gave up to go to the druid, Jahiera, to plead their case.
She was right. Art hated when Aella was right. But perhaps it wouldn't be so bad to at least sit down. So, with a heaviness in her legs, she collapsed onto a barstool. All at once, it hit her, and she dropped her head into hand with a sigh.
"I've heard there's a cure for that," said a familiar voice.
Art startled. "Gale! I..." and she promptly tripped over her own feet, her arm splaying outward to knock a glass off the bar. It shattered somewhere a thousand miles away. "Oh, bollocks. I'm sorry, I--"
But before she could bend down to pick up the shards, Gale stopped her and swiped his fingers, casting a quick Mending spell to reverse the damage. He held the glass out to her, and Art took it. It was then that she noticed that he held a bottle of--something-- and another glass for himself.
"I know we haven't known each other for very long," he said while sliding onto the barstool next to her, "but I can't say I've ever seen you so tired."
"It's... been a long day." She sank back down again to sit, deflating.
Gale gave a knowing, gentle smile that sent her heart aflutter, and filled her glass first. The scent alone might be enough to singe her eyebrows. She appraised Gale strangely as she eyed his own portion of the drink. "Don't you usually go for something more... I don't know, refined?"
"Refinery is a beautiful thing," he said, swirling his glass. "But it makes for poor memory-erasing bliss."
"You, clearly, have never experienced refinery properly, then," Art said with a sniff, though she wasn't about to reject the drink. It burned all the way down, settling in her stomach with a tingling warmth just this side of itching. "Mystra's tits, that's..." She coughed.
Gale narrowed his eyes at the rather specific curse, but that didnt dampen the humor in his eyes.
They drank in silence for a while, the buzz of alcohol raising the fuzziness with which Art perceived the room around them. It lightened the weight in her head, though, and she wasn't going to bemoan the numbness that spread down her aching arm.
Gale gestured to her arm. "How is it?"
She bristled. "Fine, thanks."
"You're welcome."
She glanced at him with a look.
Instead of biting, though, Gale set his glass down. His voice softened. "I was hoping for a moment to speak with you."
"About what?" She asked, looking away, even though she had a feeling that she knew.
"About what I saw in the weave."
Heat that had nothing to do with the burn of drink flamed across her cheeks.
She could feel his hesitation like a pulse, feel the careful way he leaned to try and catch her gaze. "Artemesia, I wanted to apologize."
That had her snapping her head around. "What?"
"I'm not blind to the way you've been avoiding me," he said. "I do enjoy our conversations, quite a lot actually, and I'd be remiss not to note their lack of frequency as of late."
"Do you always like to stuff as many words as possible in your sentences?" She said, trying to throw the conversation's weight.
To no avail. Gale was perhaps the one person who could effectively dig in to the seriousness of a topic even more aggressively than Art could upend it. "I've upset you in some way, I think, and I-- well, if I assumed too much the other night, if I said something that was stepping a bit too far..."
"You think you said something?" She said, having to restrain herself from gaping.
"Well, yes. Whatever else could it be?"
Whatever else could it be, he says. That night had been over a week ago, nearly a fortnight, and every moment since then, every fibre of Art's being cringed at the memory of being so vulnerable.
Gale tilted his head, following her drifting gaze. "I'm not familiar with that look. Please, enlighten me."
"Gale..." She sighed through her nose and pinched the bridge. "You didn't do anything. I overstepped, I'm the one who bloody..."
She couldn't finish it. Gods, why was this so difficult?
"Artemesia," he said, voice careful, so so careful, "Can I ask you something?"
"What?"
"Did you mean it? I mean..." it was his turn to flush, pink dusting his cheeks, and gods, if it wasn't adorable. "Was your vision sincere? Is... well... is it something you would still want?"
Art found herself tunneling back into the recesses of her mind, her memories flinging backward to every moment she'd carefully filed away as too dangerous to revisit. Even though she did revisit such memories, more often than she'd like to admit. Memories like how annoyed she'd been with him in their earlier days of traveling, like the look on his face (surprised, then delighted) when he'd found she was herself a studier of magic, like when he'd thanked her for each and every magical item she'd gladly parted with abject sincerity.
Memories like when he'd taken her hand and placed it upon the orb, delving with her into untold darkness and disrepair and she'd stared into the void of his soul and found it did not scare her.
Hells below... how had this happened?
"I..." her tongue felt stuck, as though her mouth were instead full of taffy. Then she cleared her throat and forced herself to stare into the dregs of her glass. "What I want doesn't matter. We've more important things to worry about." She didn't dare turn to see the disappointment, the pain of rejection.
"That wasn't a no."
"Gale--"
He took her hand, and everything in Art froze up. She found herself paralyzed, yet compelled to meet his gaze.
"Art! Oi, we've got a druid in need of a word!"
Art looked that way towards Karlach, Aella, and Jaheira. Disengaging her hand from Gale's grasp, she departed to see to their host. But not before Gale vied for one last word.
"Find me later, Artemesia."
Maybe it was how he said her name, the way he always said her full name, which had her giving him a curt nod. Somehow, it had become impossible to resist.
Art did find Gale later, suspecting a continuation of a rather hard conversation, so she came prepared. Tome tucked under her arm, she met him outside Last Light, just within view of the bubble of light which encased them all within Isobel's sanctuary.
It was the last kind of conversation Art wanted to have, but one that she figured Gale wouldn't leave be. He was never one to leave things be; curiosity was a vice they shared, and she knew all too well the pull of a secret, the lure of a confession untold. Plus, Gale was incurably bent on honesty, in the most verbose sense of the word.
"Beautiful night, isn't it?" Gale said with a mote of sarcasm, gesturing to the gloom beyond the bubble.
Art snorted, leaning against a post. "I especially like the dead trees. Really brings the place to life."
"Someone should really put this place out there as a vacation spot. Think of the money you could rack up with a view like this."
"And here I was thinking the gloom was a bit goshe."
"Nonsense. That's it's charm."
Art shifted her weight, fingers worrying at the leather cord that held the old book together. Gale, ever the stereotype of a wizard, noted it immediately. "What have you got there?"
Art gathered up a breath, steeling herself courage (which, mind you, was usually in sterling condition). She held out the book for show. "This is the reason why we cannot have this conversation."
Gales brow furrowed, the lines between his eyebrows pronounced.
Art explained. "Gale, I know you want to talk about the Weave-vision, and about--about us, but... well, it's better if I just tell you everything."
Gale didn't respond, just silently nodded, though he did say, "I know that book. You write in it often."
She nodded. "It's a journal I've kept for... many years. I haven't ever shared it with anyone. Before, it was my one tell-- I kept a lot of personal information that people could use against me, you see... Well, anyway. I've also been writing since we escaped the nautiloid. But I've been reading back over the past entries and..."
"And?"
Art sighed. She clutched the book to her chest, now unsure why she'd brought it at all. Her heart felt squeezed, as though someone had clamped their fist around it and was restricting even her ability to breathe. "I can't let what happened in the weave happen in real life, because it isn't who I am. It isn't who I'm supposed to be, that is. Gale, I don't know how much you know about my past, but I'm a criminal, and not a petty one, mind you. There have been very few precious people in my life, for a reason. And I don't know how the rest of this Absolute business is going to go on for, but on the chance I get to go back to my normal life... if anyone found I cared for you, it could be very, very bad. For both of us."
Gale was silent for a long while. His hand rested on the pillar that Art leaned against, his posture looking as though it were caught between two moments, two separate reactions. Then he said, his voice faint, "You care for me?"
"That-- wasn't the point of what I said," Art replied, rushing through the words.
"Yet you said it all the same."
"I..." She couldn't look away from his face, the expression spread there for her to drink in. It made him look so young, she thought she could glimpse the kind of young man he might have been years ago, before the claws of his goddess had gotten a chance to sink into him. How long had it been since he'd loved someone, she wondered, and had he loved anyone at all before her? Hate for the Lady of Mysteries bloomed in her anew, for how many years of normalcy, of wonder and young love had the goddess stolen from Gale? The look he seemed unable to hide from her now, though, seemed to dash all those years away, gilded by the moonmaiden's magic barrier. He was a new creature in its light.
Then he smiled with half his mouth, almost a smirk. "It's not often you're speechless."
Her cheeks burned. "Hells take you."
He laughed, and the sound made Art's heart ache, overstretched in the effort to reach for something the rest of her body still refused to lean into.
"I'm not going to push you," Gale said, sincere. His eyes softened. "I understand the desire to protect people from one's self. But-- Artemesia, I do hope you understand that I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself."
"I know that," she said, crossing her arms.
"I know you know." His smile was so warm, so kind, so... much. Everything about him was so unapologetically much. When he reached a hand out to brush a strand of hair behind her ear, she thought surely he'd cast a spell of some sort, surely nonmagical means could not be enough to freeze her in place so thoroughly. "I will only ask... are you certain you do not want to try?"
Try. Art had been trying for many things over many years, but this was one territory she'd never dared try. Why did he have to be so understanding about kind, so, so... Art didn't even have the words for it. His hand hadn't moved. His thumb brushed the curve of her jaw. She could feel herself melting, her eyes treacherously fluttering closed at the softness of the touch, her heart flipping in somersaults beneath her ribcage. She'd never felt like this, not with anybody, before. Sure there had been flings, but those were mostly business-related, meant to woo someone into a good deal. It had never been real. This... this was real.
It was as though Gale possessed an innate ability to draw the truth from her where no one else on the face of Faerun had been able to, threading it forward, refining it like spun wool into something precious. Her words were not her own, her eyes were closed, she could hear her own heartbeat in her ears. "I want to try, Gale. But I do not think I can. I don't know how."
She heard the shift of fabric, felt the heat of a body near, and leaned in to the touch of hands cradling her head as though holding treasure. "If it is any consolation, I barely know how either."
She smiled faintly, a laugh halfway falling from her lips. She dared crack her eyes open, and that was her final mistake. The instantaneousness with which Art found herself lost in his eyes should be studied. It could easily be the fastest sensation to ever occur. She felt drunk, and not because of the fire of drink consumed earlier. No, this felt like falling to sleep, or being lulled into a fey trap.
It was almost as though some outside force pushed her to kiss him, to barely brush her lips against his, but as soon as she did, it was as though the entire world, with all its jagged pieces and chaos, slotted together into something that just made sense. Melt was an understatement for what Gale and Artemesia did; though this was the start of something, the barest push past a precipice, it felt and looked and was more like falling into the middle of a sentence. They were both caught in the midst of a storm before they'd even realized they'd stepped one foot into it.
Art sighed, leaning in, and her arms wound their way around Gale's neck, her fingers twining lazily through the ends of his hair. Gale, for his part, took it in stride, holding her to him the way one might hold a precious thing, guarding it against the world. Both knew this was not a beginning, that this was likely to end in doom, and that this, whatever this was, could not possibly be afforded them with the grim business they had ahead of them. But for a moment in time, in love's Last Light, they allowed themselves to pretend.
And oh, what a wonder pretending was.