Archive of Our Own

Dear Karlach,

I know it's pointless to write you, with you being dead and all.

But you were the only one of our group that I really trusted.

I miss you.

I need your humor to help me with this weird situation that's happening. I remember that night around the fire, when the others had gone to bed, and you told me all about your parents, and how much love you had for them before they died. I knew I should pity you, but in my heart, I was jealous. I never knew Mother. And Father and I ... are complicate at best.

I wrote that line five days ago and it has only gotten worse.

Remember that young woman we saved from the hag? I'm sure you do, you loved to retell the stories of our success to the tiefling children at the Last Light Inn. Mol is still at the Guild. I'm so glad you let us go to Avernus and get her contract. I know you had hesitations.

I upheld my promise to you, after we came back. I let you die when you told me it was your time. I watched your illithid body bleed out. Do you know how hard it was to not beg Shadowheart to revive you, to demand Jaheria do research into druidic knowledge on repairing a good soul that was in a bad body?

Shit, not that your body was ugly--

Right, you won't read this.

I hired Mayrina as a maid for the Ravengard family. Come to find out that she's two years, almost to the day, younger than me. Once she was under my employ, I was able to provide her with a reliable bed and time to rest before the baby comes. She didn't have to do a day of work. I thought this was all good work, providing this woman with some charity.

Well.

I can trust you to keep my worst thoughts hidden, right?

Mayrina takes several daily walks. Her presence caught the eye of Father. They started chatting, and bonded over being widowed or something. I was writing to seek your comfort about Father's eyes that seemed to linger too long on her. I thought that it was a simple crush. But then... then...

All I know is that two days ago, I walked into Father's office without knocking and found him with his lips on the girl!

The jumped apart and her cheeks were bright red. Father was calm, of course, and reprimanded me for not knocking. As if I will ever make that mistake again!

I know Father has been with others since Mother. But, to my knowledge, they were all age appropriate. There weren't with someone who's actively pregnant with her dead husband's child.

Honestly, how could she do this to Connor? How does one go from making a deal with a hag to seducing the Grand Duke?

That is unkind of me. In all likelihood, Father is the root of this problem. Preying on a troubled, young woman who likely hasn't even kissed someone besides her childhood sweetheart! I finally have stopped thinking of Father as a villain, but perhaps I was too hasty.

Mayrina came to me, after. Told me that she was sorry for what happened. Father's been the first person who understood the grief she went through.

Guess if his dick is involved, he can understand people making deals with evil entities!

She was nice enough about it all, but every bit of my skin prickles at the thought of them.

I wish you were here. I wish you could come up with a joke about this, or provide some insight on how maybe this isn't the worst. Maybe you'd say that you'd try to set up Father with Okta or Zevlor.

I don't know. I just miss you. We might have only been friends for a few months, but you were the best friend I ever had.

Yours,
Wyll

Dear Karlach,

Father finally talked to me about it. He invited me to breakfast.

When I was a kid, I often wasn’t able to see Father during the days and evenings. We would always try to have breakfast together. I dreaded going, assuming that she would be joining us.

I was wrong. It was just him and I.

He told me that he sees everything in stark contrasts, all good, all bad. All white, all black. It is easy, he said, to stay within those bounds when you see them so clearly. Mayrina has helped him to understand that not everyone see the world as such. That things can live in the shades of grey between.

Where was this understanding for me?

She challenges him, apparently, in a way that he likes. She doesn’t understand the politic machinations of Baldur’s Gate but she does understand how the smallfolk need to be helped. She is able to advise him even when she doesn't realize it.

His eyes soften so much when he talks about her. I've never seen him... care so much about someone else.

Father reassured me that I had walked in on their first ever kiss. He hadn't thought that she would see him like this.

I said very little, aching to get out of the worst breakfast. Even more awkward than the morning after Astarion tried to bite me. Remember that? Gods, we all barely knew each other then. I was only recently devilified and we didn't know about the Orb. Or the Absolute.

You were always singing and dancing and making the world feel alive.

I know, you want the remaining hot goss, you don't need me stuck reminiscing about days gone by.

I told Father that I would withhold judgement until there was something he wanted my input on.

More grace than he deserves but what am I to do?

She's due within the next week or so. If she wants to spend the next few weeks being in love with Father, what's the harm? From what the maids have told me, Father was fairly absent during my babehood, although that was likely for other reasons. Surely, the crying of the child will drive him away.

Father already told me that he's gotten several midwives on standby, as well as a cleric, "so it doesn't happen again."

I don't know what to do. I don't know what I can do.

There is a deep fear here that I do not how to put into words. I do not posses the vocabulary yet to understand what it is. It is a worry, sickness deep in my stomach. It is a racing heart, a sweat dripping from my brow.

I hope all goes well for Mayrina. She is rather brave, even if she has a poor choice in suitors.

(that was about Father, not Connor!!)

Missing your hugs,
Wyll

To my much-missed friend,

The baby is here! Mayrina is doing well, and complains that the pillows are too soft. She is enjoying the presence of Father when little Elsbethany Fran sleeps.

Father could not rest while she laboured. I know that she let him in a few times, and when she wanted alone times, he paced outside her doorway.

I've never seen him care so much.

I like it on him.

Why does my stomach hurt so? Why does my breathing change when I think about him around her? It is not a jealousy. At least, I don't think so? After everything, Father does deserve to rest and have some happiness.

Remember when we joked about setting up Father with Zevlor? Two harden men who could use a little happiness? I never once felt worry or concern at the thought of Father dating again, or of being taken with a new partner. But Mayrina... there is something here that makes my skin itch as if a thousand bugs crawl along it.

Usually, I love to hold babies and love getting to help them fall asleep. There's nothing like a helpless creature trusting another so fully. And their little fingers and the small coos. First smiles and precious giggles. Sometimes I wonder what our child would have looked like.

I was taken away from my writing to deal with a new issue about the rebuilding of the Gate. Father has not been as responsive to the city as of late and I keep having to take on things in his stead.

I don't hate it, I enjoy helping people. But I don't think I belong here, getting glares from people I used to socialize with, adoring notes from people who seek closeness to a hero. I am not a Hero of the Gate. I am not a politician. I am me.

It is nice that people are finally starting to see me as a separate entity from Father. I'm more than a pawn for those seeking to get close to him, a tool to be leverages to draw his ire onto me instead of them.

Father is finally starting to see me as a son again.

But then I see him holding little Elsbethany and the glow in his eyes. If Mayrina would have it, she might the daughter he always wanted.

Or, at least, a child who doesn't disappoint him.

...

Gods, am I jealous of a babe? Is that what I have been feeling? That she is getting the care and attention from Father in the ways I never did? Of course Father can be more attentive when the mother survives child birth! Of course Father can-

Ugh, someone knocks on my door again.

Eternally yours,
Wyll