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If Gale didn’t know better, he would presume that hunk of a Wood Elf’s voice was emanating across camp with the aid of a thaumaturgy spell. Given that Gale did, in fact, know better, he knew it was simply the booming nature of the Archdruid’s voice on any given day.
He read the paragraph from the large tome resting in his hands. Then read it again. And again.
“… but you lifted the fog…”
And again.
“… you don’t even know how extraordinary you are. But I do.”
And again.
“… I think you feel the same way. We both felt it. I want to lay with you under the stars –”
The tome smacked shut. Luckily, Gale was quite a few tents down from Halsin. Lucky for him or Halsin, well, Faerûn would never know.
Gale all but fell to a sitting position, his head swimming with trepidation, dread, and something like nausea. Good Gods, was he near faint?
He shook his head, images of Tav – his Tav – not beneath the stars, but within. Her very soul the shade of moonlight, making him think of all the times that same moon was all he had to talk to, and joining with his own. Joining and becoming and folding into. How gentle she was. How in awe. How beaming in radiance.
How she smiled.
It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
He would take the bit of bile that rose into his throat at the thought of his radiance being taken from him – each thread of her pulled away one by one by that, that… druid – to the grave.
Gale crawled into his tent, the change in angle sending his head swimming once more, before laying down on his back.
Halsin. The man who tore down more goblins than Gale could count with his claws. Who united Oliver and Thaniel, effectively saving the Shadow-Cursed Lands. Who nearly cried at the state of Baldur’s Gate and its treatment of the most vulnerable.
The very contradiction of him – thick with muscle, and tenderness. Capable of anger, but never recklessness. The great bear, only when it was necessary.
Gale swallowed. He had found, throughout his life, being himself was something he could not seem to evade. He was layered, yes, and complicated, but always painstakingly homogeneously Gale Dekarios. It had gotten him where he is now – embedded with nothing less than a cancerous curse – and somewhere, deep down, he knew any attempt Gale of Waterdeep made to change that would not be enough.
And who was he to think Tav was his? Could even tolerate such a stifling? Such a life? She had claimed to love him, yes, but she was home now. They were nearing the end of their sorry adventure. Clarity, reflection, discernment… it was only a natural part of endings. As natural as the stars twinkling through his tent.
He closed his eyes, attempting to steady his heart (or was it the orb – he had a hard time telling the difference anymore) down to a murmur. He had found this exercise soothing, those months he was alone. If he had control of nothing else, he remembered thinking to himself, his heart thumping behind his ribs never seemed to let him down.
In this moment, however, it was uncooperative.
His brain continued to torture him – images of how he had held Tav after their bonding, only replaced with Halsin. The two of them venturing the Shadow-Cursed Lands together, seeing firsthand the good they had brought to the world. Hands clasped together. A blossoming of life in Tav’s womb, Halsin bringing a hand to it –
Gale hissed as if he had been burned, his eyes widening. He pulled himself up to rest on his elbows and ran a hand through his ruined half-knot.
Except it wasn’t his hand. It was Tav’s, undoing the band as she pulled his mouth to hers, mumbling sleepily, “Mm, never wanna leave, Gale of Waterdeep.”
His cheeks flushed at the memory, but his spine tingled at that title, that lie, that failure –
Her scent hit him before his eyes could register her slightly swollen face, red eyes, tear-stained cheeks.
“Darling –” he caught himself, like a knife to his gut “Tav –”
She said nothing. Instead, she straddled him, gripped him by the collar, and kissed him.
Like a gust of wind against old sails, his agony groaned as it was replaced with calm. Quiet. Strength.
He felt her tears beneath his thumb as he framed her face, but she only kissed him harder – laying him fully on his back once more and digging her hands into his hair. He felt her release the band, heard its bwing as it launched itself Gods-know-where, and resisted an unexpected urge to laugh until he cried.
“Dearest,” he mumbled, pulling her mouth barely an inch off of his own, “has something happened –“
“I love you, Gale,” she said, loud enough to pierce through to Astarion's and Minthara’s adjacent tents. A larger part of Gale than he was willing to admit hummed with the thought of her doing so on purpose. “You know that?”
He sat up, keeping her close to him as he did. He said without a shred of hesitation, “Of course I know that, beloved. Of course.”
She kissed him again – sloppily, tearfully. Her front teeth knocked into his, but he did not attempt to hold her back. He let her take what she wanted, and give everything in return.
“Halsin,” she mumbled, “Halsin, he just…”
Something in Gale lit aflame. Something without form. He felt it slouching and scrounging to surface.
“Has he hurt you?”
“No, no,” she whispered, running a thumb across his lower lip. “He thought… he thought I wanted him in, that way, and I… I have never. Will never. He’s – he’s a close friend, an ally. But now I –”
Gale let her flounder. Let her grip onto him as she arose back to shore.
“I fear I was not making it clear enough how much it has always and will forever be you.”
Gale looked at the woman in his arms – really looked at her. He saw a warrior, a friend, a leader, a lover. A future wife, maybe, if she would want that, but a future so many other things too. She was courageous, but often shivered and rolled in her sleep with fear. She was powerful, but more so in certain areas than others. She was weak, sometimes. She allowed herself to be weak. He didn’t quite know how she managed that. He hoped to learn. She was playful and spiteful and intelligent and ignorant, in infinite and as of yet unknowable ways.
She was as much of a contradiction as anyone else. He did not know if he could hold all of her at once. But she did. And looking at her now, he swore to all the Gods he could think of that he would work the rest of his life to prove her right.
He said all of this to her. Well, he thought so. He said something, at least, that lowered her shoulders and made her look at him with so much her he felt bathed in it.
She kissed him tenderly, and he would think of it always as the best kiss of his life.
“I love you,” she said, “I think it was always going to be you.”
The depth of that comment threw his world off its axis, and just as he had the moment he looked into her gorgeous eyes, he responded by bumbling like an idiot.
“Oh I do have the magic touch,” he replied, his voice cracking in the middle, and Tav pushed him onto his back with a kiss so fierce he would think of it always as the second best kiss of his life.