Work Text:
There’s something about it, when Shadowheart decides to throw her best performance into a moment of absolute mischief. She sees her chance and thinks quickly, and he falls for it. For a split second, she really does see his eyes go wide.
"Oh Hells, you didn't pick that by hand did you? They're deathly poisonous!"
There’s something in the way he laughs about it, when she reveals the joke a heartbeat later. Because he really laughs. Like he’d been waiting their whole adventure to hear her joke like that. She knows the only reason she was able to pull one over on him is because he wasn’t expecting it from her.
She wonders if anyone has ever laughed like that for her, because it’s got to be one of the best feelings she’s ever had.
He finds a vase and places the flower by her bed. He starts chuckling whenever he passes by, and she decides that when it starts to wilt, she’ll press it and keep it around for as long as possible. Who doesn’t need a reminder to laugh in these times, anyways?
- - -
“There’s a pink one!! And a pretty one that looks like a snowball… and that one! It’s shaped like a ring!” Yenna pauses, suddenly fraught with worry. “Am I picking out too many?”
“No way.” A big hand pats her shoulder. “Yenna we have nine people back at the Elfsong, plus us. We’re going to need boxes of these things. And I think everyone would fully trust your donut judgement. You’ve got the cook’s eye.”
“Okay!” Enthusiasm renewed, Yenna turns back to the bakery counter. “Hmm…”
“Oooh…” Jahen’s just spotted something, and he points over her shoulder, “Those. Honeybuns. We have to get some of those for Halsin. He’ll love them.”
Yenna holds up her fingers. “Three honeybuns, please!”
- - -
There’s something about the way Astarion comes back to the beds full of his sleeping companions and finds one pair of eyes still open every night. He sneers in his usual way about it, more than once cracking a particularly scathing, “There’s no need to wait up for me, darling.”
Making the most of some barbed jabs is much easier than admitting it annoys him. Mostly because he isn’t sure why all this waiting around is happening. His worst assumption keeps eating away at him - that he’s being watched with a distrustful eye. Can’t afford to let him run loose and hunt down civilians to get his “fix” now that they’re back in the city, after all. It’s what he’d be thinking, if their roles were reversed.
It isn’t until the entrance he’s been using to get down to the sewers gets jammed up one night that he learns the truth. He spends the better part of an hour trying to force the damn thing open. When he finally gives up, he’s sweating and swearing, and resigns himself to a long night of searching for a different exit.
He starts picking his way down the path, between the patches of mud and rancid waters. He explores one tunnel, then the next, carefully scenting the air for any hint of a fresh breeze from above ground. Then he hears something in the distance… the sound of his name, called through the tunnels back the way he’d come. Astarion only has a moment to wonder if he’s hallucinating before he hears it again. Then an enormous shape comes crashing around the corner and nearly bowls him over.
“Sorry, sorry.” The words are breathless, but relieved. “You didn’t come back when you usually do. Glad you’re alright. The hatch was jammed - I think I’ve fixed it. Come back whenever you’re ready.”
It’s a realization that Astarion quickly feels a clawing need to escape. It was much, much easier to believe he’d been thought the worst of than to know someone is staying up every night to wait for him, just in case he doesn’t come back.
There’s something about it though, the next time he slips out. When he makes his return, he finds the same watchful pair of eyes, and instead of having to bury his annoyance, he finds a moment of comfort instead.
- - -
There’s something about it, when Gale idly complains about the stiffness in his neck and shoulders after staying up half the night poring over the tomes they’d collected from Ramazith's Tower. He doesn’t miss the worried crease around his friend’s eyes, as his gaze wanders to the cover of the nearest book. Gale can sense the tension and he can't help but feel unsettled, because he knows the concerns are reasonable… even if he doesn’t agree.
But the probing questions he expects never come. Instead, the next day he finds a new lamp brought over to the low seats where he’s been doing his reading. The lamp is hung from a ceiling beam, carefully suspended at such a perfect height that Gale can place a book on the table underneath and read without bending over or holding his head in contortions.
It's later that same night that someone brings him a bowl of warm soup at suppertime. "Here. You've been letting your food get cold every night since we found those books. You should take better care of yourself."
"Far be it from me to refuse a generous assist." Gale chuckles a little and waits for a smile, but the one he gets is half-hearted. "I rather thought you'd take exception to my exhaustive delving of these many terrible mysteries."
"It does scare me, but you would know far better than I would if there's anything dangerous involved. I just hope you'll be careful. We'd be a sorry bunch without our favorite wizard around to tell us not to lick shiny things."
Gale's thoughts are still reeling as he laughs. He's not sure he's ever experienced such open-faced honesty and heartfelt loyalty in the same breath before. It takes him a minute to put a finger on what it is that his friend is telling him. It comes to him, somehow both slowly and all at once.
Deliberate trust. Earnest care. Despite the disagreement, despite the worry. Despite the havoc Gale could wreak, if he’s wrong about any of this.
There’s something about it that’s almost alien to him. Unconditional, he thinks maybe the word is, after he sits and thinks on it for such long while he loses his place in his readings.
When he finally snuffs out the lamp and goes to bed, he’s not stiff or uncomfortable. He sleeps well.
- - -
Shadowheart sighs and takes her failed braid down for the third time, laying out her pins like an arsenal and readying her shoulders for another long hour. “I swear, this would be so much easier with an extra pair of hands.”
“I can be extra hands?”
She nearly throws a spell at him as she whips around, startled, and Jahen sheepishly holds said hands up in a gesture of peace. “Sorry. I wasn’t trying to be sneaky. Guess you were just absorbed.”
“What was that you said?” She hesitates, wondering if he was serious or just joking. “You don’t have to help, I can manage.”
“No, I don’t have to help. But I can. If you would like me to.”
She smiles and bobs her head at him. “Come on then. Just make sure you do exactly as I say. It’s a finicky art, this.”
“Aye aye.” His movements are gentle as he gathers her long locks over her shoulders.
- - -
There’s something about it, when she wakes suddenly in the mornings, strung tighter than an ill-tuned lute from deeply unsettled dreams. Somehow, Jaheira expected another crisis befalling the city to feel almost like routine. But she’s tired, and can’t seem to see the forest for the trees this time around. Her usual contacts and resources are thin and scattered, and her newfound allies are young enough to look upon her as a great hero when she feels anything but.
She doesn’t realize right away that he’s noticed, because the gesture comes as a friendly cup of coffee left at her elbow one morning at breakfast, and she thinks nothing of it. But the next day, it happens again, and Jaheira’s heart sinks. Shit. I’ve been letting it show.
She opens her mouth the third morning to tell him to stop fussing over his elders and keep himself focused on the task before them, but stops short when she realizes that this time, he’s got the cup of coffee in one hand and a book in the other. Her curiosity wins over, and he sits himself down and opens the leather-bound journal, proudly showing her what has to be months, if not years, of beautifully-drawn wild plants, with little notes in the margins on their uses and properties. Then, he asks her advice. Apparently, he’s been thinking of publishing it someday, and wants to know if Jaheira thinks he’s missing anything important.
Thus begins a pattern. He comes to her, again and again - asking for her advice on battle strategies, and supply runs, and the political firestorm marching its way through the city as the tension of the day builds and builds. He comes to pick her brain when strange things cross their paths at unexpected times, wanting to know if she sees any connections that could be dangerous. She’d almost feel pestered if not for the fact that his unfailing trust stokes the fires of her determination. Her advice consistently proves relevant, lifting burdens from the path ahead of them both. He seems to sleep better at night, and Jaheira does too.
He opens up a little more one evening and tells her that he was far more confident in taking the lead when they were all out in the wilderness. He hides it beneath a joke about not being sure what convinced everyone that he was the most responsible of the group, but he’s certain now that they’re back in the city, he’s going to end up getting someone killed. She recognizes the heaviness in him, and knows immediately it’s what he’s been seeing in her.
She gives him a friendly cuff on the shoulder to pull his gaze from the floor to meet hers. “It’s no easy truth, but trying to be perfect - to never fail, never misstep - is a mission failed before it’s begun. You must learn to make your choices and live with them, no matter the outcome.”
He nods tiredly, and Jaheira grips his arm. “But the others place their trust in you for a reason, too. I know it can be hard to see it. But I don’t think we’d have come this far if it had been anyone but you filling these very big shoes.”
He gives her a thin smile, and she knows two things at once; that he’s heard the message and will take it to heart — and that he hopes that she does, too.
There’s something about the way the coffee becomes a daily routine before long.
- - -
Wyll laughs and tries to pry the big, eager hand away from the base of his horns. “No, no! Properly, now. This should be romantic. We’re having a date, and my father could be around any corner. We must show some decorum.”
“I’m being romantic.” Jahen protests, fond and impatient. “I'm trying rather hard to kiss you right now. That’s romantic.”
“My horns aren’t handlebars.” Wyll is doing his best to force down the grin, but it’s not working very well. “Not in public, anyway. Let’s try to keep that in mind.”
Jahen grumbles but acquiesces, and pulls Wyll in for a kiss with a much more elegant grip under his chin. His other hand comes to support Wyll’s back, and he presses into him and makes the world disappear.
“Shit.” Wyll’s head is spinning afterwards. “So you do know the moves.”
“I know them. And I can pull them out if they make you happy.” Jahen wags his brow a little. “But the whole script is a bit tedious for me. I’d rather just grab you and kiss you as much as I like.”
“Down, boy.” Wyll says sternly, and Jahen chuckles into the next kiss he gives.
- - -
There’s something about the way he never misses an opportunity to reach for Karlach.
She’ll never have to ask for it, that much is sure. The hugs, the whacks, the nudges, the pounds on her back — they’re constant. She loves it.
Sometimes it ends with the two of them outright wrestling on the ground at camp while Astarion and Shadowheart make petty quips and Lae’zel and Halsin egg them on. Sometimes she’ll come around the corner of his tent and just sprawl on the dude to flatten him into the ground and hear him laugh about it. Sometimes when the fighting gets bad they brace back-to-back for support before throwing themselves into the frenzy again.
It’s what makes it all worth it in the end. It’s been a damn tough road, and she knows whatever the ending is, it’s not going to be easy. She knows he’s always thinking about her engine, always following any leads they can find, stashing any infernal iron they get their hands on. He always hesitates a little when he passes her a soul coin; she can see the worry in his eyes.
Right now though, she’s really got everything she’s been wanting for the last ten years. The cool breeze, the green grass — hells, even the stink of the city is a welcome change from brimstone and ash. Her friends, gathered around the campfire. The feeling of another strong hand squeezing her own.
The end of the story is future Karlach’s problem. Today’s Karlach is ready to get a little too excited and shove a good friend into the nearest lake, to feel a warm body against her palms as she rams into him. There’s something about how fucking funny he looks swearing waterlogged revenge.
He’ll never manage to sneak up behind her long enough to make good on it, though. She’ll make sure of that.
- - -
There’s something about the way the man never, ever gives up on him.
Wyll’s been going it alone for a long time. He's known his course, his path, with resolute certainty, and he does not stray from it. If he ever feels himself hesitating, if he ever finds himself questioning, he makes sure he sets himself right. To do what is right. To hold to the truth.
He's always known that to question is to let doubt invade and muddle the truth. And as someone going it alone, he can't afford to let himself stray from that path. He's honestly not sure if he could find it again if he did.
But sometimes, now, when a terrible choice is rearing up like a lion, and Wyll braces to meet it head-on with the truth, he can feel a gentle hand at his shoulder. There's something about the steadying warmth about not being left to face these things alone.
"Sometimes the choice isn't so much a night-and-day thing as we'd hope," the words come over the dying embers of a quiet campfire. "And there's always a chance to miss something... maybe even end up doing more harm than good, if we don't know the whole story. Means sometimes the questions are worth asking."
"You're right of course - in theory." Wyll watches the stars, the anchors of a world cast upon the great nothingness of the cosmos. "But the fact of the matter is that I can't always afford to ask those questions. Not when it might mean comprising the duty I know I hold, drawing me away from the path I know I'm meant to follow. It's not always wise to make room for doubts."
A warm hand squeezes his shoulder. "You have friends now, Wyll. I guess not all of us are on the same page all the time, but - maybe think of me, or Karlach, or Halsin. You know us, and you know we'd hold just as tightly to justice and compassion, wherever possible, as you would. We wouldn't let you go off the deep end without a fight. We can ask the big questions together, rather than always go it alone."
A silence falls, and the stars dance overhead with a freedom and weightlessness that Wyll envies.
"Maybe so," he allows -- and that one allowance undoes a knot inside him that's at least a decade old.
The nights and the days and the justice in the old stories... maybe even they're not as trustworthy as the love of a like-minded friend.
- - -
Gale skids to a halt in his finely stitched wizard boots when he feels a tap on his shoulder. “Not to be hasty, but can you be quick about it? I’ve just spotted a lovely set of quill and ink I was hoping to take a little gander at.”
“I dunno.” There’s a wild grin playing over Jahen’s face. “I was going to ask you if you could explain in excruciating detail—“ he gestures to a beaming Karlach holding two different weapons beside the merchant’s stand, “—the difference between these two enchantments and which one would be better suited for Karlach’s strengths?”
“Oh.” His greatest weakness calls. Not only permission but invitation to wax lyrical about all the wonderful magical intricacies of a particular field? Gale rubs his hands together and forgets all about any previous shopping goals flitting through his head. “My pleasure. I thought you’d never ask, quite frankly.”
- - -
There's something about the way he never flinches from hard questions.
It comes up again when the company has found their way to a shop somewhere in the lower quarter. Karlach shouts in excitement and Astarion gives her an amused shushing. Halsin reads the signs, takes in the scent of smokepowder and the metallic tang in the air, and the bitterness hisses out between his teeth before he can bite it back.
"Confounding inventions. Who can take joy in something that terrifies animals?"
He's wishing he'd held his tongue when his friend turns to look at him softly. Maybe it's tinged with a bit of sadness, too. It's a strange way to look, when Halsin might have expected to see scorn, impatience, or judgment.
"Other animals." The unassuming reply. "Looking for a little light or noise to create this... little bit of excitement. Maybe it's not as gentle as we could be. But I also don't think we're less animal for it."
Halsin stops to think about it. He remembers their quiet discussion not too long ago, that perhaps nature and civilization are not opposing forces but merely two sides of the same coin.
His friend continues. "If it's any comfort, I usually see these used in city squares or at the sides of busy streets. Few other animals around to be bothered."
"People are of higher thinking than other animals and are capable of showing respect, but seem to be incapable of thinking of anyone but themselves." Halsin says, and Karlach and Astarion are moving away and talking to the shopkeeper, leaving the discussion of hard questions behind.
"That's true." Then there's a long silence. He's thinking, instead of jumping ahead or shutting down the difficult truth or running away from it. "I think people are also hurting more deeply, because of how we think and feel. Then in the pain, we think of nothing but ourselves and whatever we need to numb it. It would be better if we didn't. It'd be better if the pain we feel doesn't cloud what we know about how we should treat the world around us. But it's hard to be bigger than the animal inside us sometimes."
Halsin recognizes a bid for his compassion when he hears it. The words resonate.
"Also..." there's a pause. "I don't think people are more evil in the city than in the wilderness. People just are. There's more chances to be cruel in the city, maybe, because there's more people. But loneliness and hunger and danger often thrive when people are scattered far apart. That's when true nature overcomes us. The law of the wild. Survival of the fittest." A warm, knowing smile. "Think there has to be a balance."
Halsin scoffs a little. "There's no balance here that I've seen."
"No. Not much of it." Another sadness falls between them. "It's hard. I suppose that's why I left."
"Then I come back again to wondering if Kagha was right to reject outsiders in the ways that she did."
"She wasn't. Kagha would have threatened and killed in order to preserve some idea of natural purity to the point that she had no mercy for anyone not exactly like her. She might have stood her ground with vines and thorns instead of metal and fire but she was still ready to damn innocent people to get her way. She wasn't balancing anything."
Halsin also recognizes truth when he hears it. He senses a sort of melancholy in his companion, and feels some regret for pushing it. But then...
"It's good to think about these things. Talk about them out loud. No one cared to when I was younger. But ignoring them doesn't make them go away."
"No," Halsin sighs deeply, but the weight he's been feeling dragging down his shoulders is much lighter than it was before. Maybe it's enough, for the moment, to recognize there are problems in the city that need seeing to. Maybe it should mean work, not contempt or defeat.
Halsin has lived a long time and has walked many different paths during his life. It is a bit of a new experience for him though, to meet someone and then to feel so deeply connected to them so soon that he can confidently pull up his roots and follow them to some unknown horizon. Halsin thinks there's something about the way his friend reaches for any lost heart he finds along the way.
Including Halsin's.
- - -
There’s something about the way that this istik listens.
Some part of her always thought she’d have been more resolute, more guarded against being swayed by one such as this. She remembers the teachings given to her from Crèche K'liir, as clearly as if they were written on the backs of her hands. Istik revile the children of Gith, so there need be no hesitation to use and discard the children of the material planes however is needed. There is no boon that the company of an istik can provide.
Except, when Lae’zel is with this company, and she turns to this one and speaks her truths plainly for him to hear, he stops, he turns to her, and he listens. He doesn’t always adhere to her expectations nor her admonitions, but she does, with some reluctance, prefer it that way. Better a reasonable and amenable ally than someone who cannot think for themselves.
Lae’zel catches herself spending more time quietly conversing with him in the evenings than she strictly ought to. That would be time better spent training or sparring or plotting their next moves against the ghaik menace. She had, at one point, suggested the two of them should spar rather than sit about flapping their gums, but he had grimaced and noted, rather astutely, that she would quickly “hand his ass to him.” From that she can gather he is at least smart enough to know when he is clearly outmatched.
It is difficult to admit, but she slowly comes to realize that it isn’t his intelligent or strategic qualities that make him someone she finds worth speaking to. Rather, the fact that he receives her, exactly as she is, with an open mind and a hand extended in more than just cooperation. Qualities that Crèche K'liir taught her that she would never have reason to search for in an istik because they could never be found outside the children of Gith.
Friend, he calls her. She finds it means something to her, even though she knows it shouldn’t. But there is something about the trust she can see in his eyes for her.
She can’t bring herself to betray it.
- - -
Astarion picks up a mirror with a silver handle, a bit of self-mocking he hasn’t quite given up on. He doesn’t quite realize that he’s not alone in the corner until it’s too late and he hears a bewildered snort.
“Still on this? Are you going to brush your hair with that?”
“Oh, shut up.” Astarion says with no real heat, tilting the surface of the mirror up to see the other face in the room. “Why do you ask? Don’t tell me it’s a mess?”
“It’s always a little tousled. Think it looks good on you, though. Can’t imagine you with perfectly combed hair.”
Now this is a surprise. Astarion turns around and raises a brow in a silent question.
Jahen seems to get entirely the wrong idea. His mind brushes up against Astarion’s and, after scoffing derisively for effect, Astarion lets him in. He’s surprised a second time, though. He receives a mirror-perfect image of who he can only assume is himself, tousled hair and all.
There are those strong piercing eyes and the curls around the ears that had surfaced during a conversation that seems very long ago now. There's a certain beauty to the image. A whisper of another joke between them. Not "Gale" good, but pretty good.
“Oh.” Astarion says, the breath sucked from his lungs. “Oh dear.”
“Astarion?” The image vanishes and Jahen backs up a little in apology. “Sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. I guess I should've--"
“No, no, give it back.” Astarion tries to sound nonchalant, but the words are choked. The vision comes back, and he smiles, clears away the tightness in his throat with a laugh. “Aha — you know, it never occurred to me that I could just ask any one of my fellow worm-jars for a reflection.”
“You can ask anytime. I guess until this is all over and done with, assuming at some point we lose our passengers.” Jahen pauses. “Huh. If and when that happens, I wonder if it’d be possible to get ahold of some kind of enchanted mirror instead that could show a vampiric reflection.”
“Why in the nine hells do you care?” Astarion’s genuine confusion comes out much coarser than he intends, and he tries again, deliberately keeping the edge from his voice this time. “How could it possibly matter?”
Jahen gives him an expression that’s somehow exactly halfway between a frown and a smile. “I don’t know for sure. I’m sure I’d know why it matters if it was my reflection that had been gone for 200 years. I’m guessing it’s that the loss of something so… normal wears on you, after a time.”
“That's not what I'm saying!” Astarion braces one hand on his hip to look as judgmental as possible. “I mean - why is that your problem?”
“Listen, no one in this world has set anything right on your behalf for a really damn long time. And you’re our friend, in case you haven't noticed. You have to let us try to look out for you if we can, like we all try to do for each other. Is that so much to ask?”
Astarion groans and pinches the bridge of his nose. “You are terribly mixed up about which direction favors and care and loyalties go in. But — fine. Fine. If I want to preen at my reflection, I’ll ask someone for a look. And if we manage to find one - if one exists, mind you - I won’t turn down an enchanted mirror.”
Jahen looks entirely too pleased with that response and Astarion gestures at him indignantly, taking a little extra care to make the arc of his hands grandiose to emphasize he doesn’t mean a word of it. “There is just something about you, you know? A terribly irritating aura of some kind. You think you’re so special.”
“Me?” Jahen points at himself innocently. “I’m boring. Probably stupid, too. Nothing to worry about.”
“Oh gods below. You are completely un-self-aware.”
Astarion is still shaking his head when Karlach pops around the corner to ask them what Gale is making for supper, and Jahen immediately tackles her into a hug as she shrieks in delight.
There’s just something about the way that he loves.