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It's well past midnight, and Shadowheart can't sleep.
It's far from the first night she's been restless since the Nautiloid crash. At first it was the tadpole keeping her awake, unaccustomed as she was to its strange movements in her skull. And then it was her worry – that her mission will be a failure, and she'll have to return to her enclave in disgrace without the Artifact. But lately it's been something else.
Ever since the night she pinned Lae'zel to the ground and wavered on the edge of cutting her throat, little else has occupied her mind.
She despises Lae'zel. She loathes her so much that she's kept awake by it, tossing and turning endlessly. She hates her voice, so condescending and needlessly intense. She hates how fastidious Lae'zel is about her own grooming, constantly bathing or brushing her auburn hair or painstakingly caring for her teeth.
And her teeth – she despises the sharp points that show when Lae'zel is snarling orders, or watching them sink into a roasted venison leg at dinner. Tearing away the flesh so easily with canines meant for a predator. It makes Shadowheart throb with – with revulsion.
Shadowheart huffs, throwing an arm over her eyes. It does nothing to help darken her thoughts.
Shadowheart hates that their tents face each other at camp almost every time. That when she's trying to focus on her prayers to Shar she can look up to see Lae'zel quietly meditating, her palms facing the sky. She hates how easily a clear mind seems to come to the gith while Shadowheart struggles to empty her own.
She's consumed with her hatred day and night, her eyes compelled to stay open and watch. To memorize the stark lines of the other woman's body. Wiry muscle over a deceptively narrow frame, moving through the world like a seasoned warrior despite her relative youth.
The power Lae'zel wields so easily isn't immediately apparent in her size, but when she brings her greatsword down on an enemy and it clefts them from shoulder to groin, cleaving through skin and bone and muscle like it's nothing –
Shadowheart shudders, and turns to her side.
She hates the way Lae'zel looks at her when she's being healed after a skirmish, as they all clean their weapons and search the bodies for valuables and Shadowheart is channelling Shar's divine magic to close whatever wound Lae'zel has inflicted on herself by running in headfirst.
Despite her level of training Lae'zel is so thoughtless sometimes, so focused on what she sees as her path that she doesn't look over her shoulder. Her armour shields her from most of it but inevitably she always needs Shadowheart's intervention, as much as she constantly complains about pain building character. The way she watches Shadowheart work as if she has a critique on the tip of her tongue. She never voices it, but – but still.
She hates Lae'zel's upturned nose, and the dark spots that dot her face like Githyanki freckles. She hates her eyes. Their rich yellow colour, catlike and entirely too expressive when she's angry or unsure of what to do next. She hates the way those eyes sometimes watch her as she walks past the gith's tent. She hates the way it makes her blood pump faster.
And what she hates above all, more than Lae'zel's teeth or her hair or her absurd strength, is how she can't stop thinking about them.
With a final, frustrated grunt, Shadowheart flips onto her stomach.
Though she can hardly remember anything beyond the mission Shar has given her, she does remember enough bits and pieces to feel ashamed of this. She remembers that the Mother Superior of her enclave had been stringent. Shar looks down on weak thoughts such as these; initiates had been taught to use sex and seduction as a tool, not for selfish pleasures. If Shadowheart had so much as hinted at interest in anyone, she was disciplined for deviating from her devotion to her goddess.
All exploration had to be done in secret with the knowledge of Shar’s disapproval. Though Shadowheart can remember the knowledge of it, the secrecy and shame, she has no memory now of the acts or anyone she did them with.
After all her training, gods forbid anyone ever found out that Shadowheart was thinking about a female gith.
She can feel sweat soaking through her shirt. Her heart is beating faster than seems healthy, and it seems to be coalescing between her legs; she needs to sleep. She won't be functional tomorrow without a few hours at least, and no amount of prayer seems to be enough to purge these thoughts from her mind.
She shouldn’t do this. She can’t.
Slowly, shamefully, Shadowheart slips a hand between her legs.
The relief is immediate. She's pathetically wet, slick and ready as she slides two fingers across her clit, and she whimpers quietly as it increases the pressure in her belly. She closes her eyes, burying her face in the thin pillow, and allows the worst thoughts to come through. Thoughts of light green skin under her hands, sharp nails digging into her flesh, pointed teeth marking her where everyone could see. Thoughts of being touched, filled, taken, rough and demanding in a way only animosity can provoke - she can't move her hand much with it pinned under her body and restricted by her clothes, but it's enough if she grinds her hips down into it just so –
"Shadowheart?"
Lae'zel's voice is like a bucket of ice water.
Shadowheart flips over, yanking her hand out of her pants and burying her wet fingertips in the bedroll, to see the object of her loathsome thoughts standing in the doorway of her tent. And she's frowning. As if Shadowheart has inconvenienced her, somehow.
"What the hells are you doing here?" Shadowheart snaps. Her heart is racing, her clit throbbing in time with it. Begging her to continue – or better yet, to pull Lae'zel down by that ridiculously revealing leather harness she struts around camp in and get her to -
"I could hear you struggling to breathe from across the camp," Lae'zel says, blunt as always. "And now I see you are sweating. Squirming." Lae'zel takes a step forward. The flap of the tent closes behind her. Her hand goes to the dagger at her belt, and horrifyingly, Shadowheart feels herself pulse in eager response. "If you are becoming ghaik, I will be swift with my blade. You will feel no pain."
Shadowheart scrambles backward. "I am not becoming a mindflayer."
"I am trained to recognize the signs," Lae'zel says, her voice low and intense. She's leaning down, the knife unsheathed. "It is better to die while your mind is still your own than to –"
"Lae'zel, if you don't get out of my tent this instant –" Shadowheart says, raising a hand to halt the gith in her tracks.
Her right hand. The hand she'd been using to touch herself. Lae'zel's nostrils, small as they are, flare. And then the slits of her irises widen.
"So you are not turning," Lae'zel says, and there's something else in her voice this time. Something warmer. Something more interested, if still patronising. "You are simply in need of sexual satisfaction."
Fuck.
"Get. Out," Shadowheart hisses.
"If that is the case, there are many in this camp who might assist you," Lae'zel says, as if Shadowheart has simply asked for help setting up her tent. "You need not struggle alone. I myself have tasted of Astarion. He was…adequate."
The reminder of that particular night is like a slap to the face. Shadowheart had heard their encounter after the Tiefling party, as had the whole camp she's sure – Lae'zel's forceful instructions, the slapping of skin on skin, Astarion struggling to keep up with her demands -
"He isn't exactly my type," Shadowheart bites out. The last thing she needs is for them to have shared a lover.
"Wyll, then. Or Gale. Even this new druid, Halsin, if you prefer something with a bit more strength."
Sitting here, soaking through her undergarments while Lae'zel suggests people for her to fuck, is getting to be just about too much. As if Halsin's strength, large as he is, could compare to -
"I don't –" Shadowheart huffs, clenching the blankets in her fist. She has no idea why she's compelled to reveal this to Lae'zel of all people, but it slips out anyways. "None of them are my type. Generally speaking. Not for something like this."
"Are you averse to men?" Lae'zel asks bluntly. "There is no shame in it. I have had many a female lover."
Gods. As if Shadowheart needed that information.
"Not that it's any of your business, but no." Shadowheart shifts in discomfort, acutely aware of the still-throbbing arousal between her thighs. It only seems to be worsening by the minute, accelerated by Lae'zel's admission. Imagining the gith with a woman pinned beneath her, writhing under the application of a hand or tongue. "I don't have a preference. I just need something rather more spirited than what they can offer, at the moment."
She isn't averse to men, necessarily. She's found her gaze lingering on the boys in camp once or twice. Each of them is handsome in their way. But asking for help from Wyll? From Gale? They're far too gentle, too compassionate for what she needs right now. Wyll would want to talk about feelings, she's sure. Gale would be more likely to read to her from one of his books than to fuck her with any kind of ardor. And Halsin cuts an impressive figure, but he's rather older and more fatherly than she'd prefer.
What she has is a very specific craving, as much as it pains her to admit.
"Ah," Lae'zel says. There's no judgement in her tone. In fact, she sounds almost more interested in the conversation now. "Perhaps Karlach, then. She is a ferocious fighter. Doubtless it would translate to sex. Or Tav, so long as it does not distract her from leadership duties. What she lacks in strength, perhaps she would make up in performance."
"I think you'll find that they're rather caught up in each other, actually," Shadowheart grumbles. She's been seeing the way Karlach and Tav look at each other on the road, the secretive smiles and not-so-casual conversations they share near Karlach's tent. "And besides, Karlach is still running too hot. I'd rather certain parts of me not get irreversibly singed."
Lae'zel blinks slowly. "I see."
"Yes, I'm sure you do," Shadowheart mutters. "Now please, for the love of all that is holy –"
"Then I offer my services."
"Get out of my tent and leave me – what?"
Shadowheart's words die on her tongue, the air sucked out of her lungs from the moment Lae'zel's words hit home. I offer my services.
Lae'zel is already unfastening her belt, throwing it – dagger and all – at Shadowheart's feet.
"You need completion. And we need you at full capacity."
"I don't – you're the last person that I'd ever want to –" Shadowheart protests, though it sounds weak even to her own ears. Her body, in stark contrast to her words, has flared up like a newly-summoned elemental at the suggestion. "When I said - Lae'zel, stop getting undressed!"
Lae'zel, to her credit, stops midway through unfastening her trousers. They're open, though. They could be removed with a flick of her wrist to reveal what's underneath, the lower half of Lae'zel's ridiculously complicated garment of leather straps. Shadowheart wants to press her lips there. Her tongue.
"Do not lie. I see the way you watch me," Lae'zel says, the low growl of her voice doing things to Shadowheart that she wishes she didn't find so damn tempting. Her posture is languid. Confident. Entirely aware of the way Shadowheart is looking at her. "The look in your eyes in the heat of battle. It is not bloodlust – it is desire. Do not deny yourself the pleasure I offer. I will only offer it once."
One word of the many shivers through Shadowheart. Pleasure.
"You're rather full of yourself, aren't you?" Shadowheart says shakily. Lae'zel smiles. It's not a kind gesture – it's more predatory, showing each of her sharp teeth. Shadowheart can almost feel them sinking deep into her shoulder, or the tender skin of her thigh. Making a mark.
"I know my worth," Lae'zel says. She shifts her weight, and Shadowheart's eyes are drawn irrevocably to the shifting muscle of her abdomen. "You wish to taste of me as much as I wish to taste of you. Why pretend otherwise?"
That admission is a surprise. That Lae'zel harbors some kind of attraction to her, despite – or perhaps because of – their mutual animosity. It's enough to throw Shadowheart truly off-balance, robbing her of her words entirely.
"You – you wish to – since when?"
Lae'zel's eyes drift over Shadowheart shamelessly. They linger on her exposed shoulders, on the bared strip of her midriff above the waist of her leather trousers. Every inch of skin she drinks in seems to burn. "We have…what was the ridiculous phrase you used? Buried our sword?"
"Hatchet," Shadowheart says faintly. Lae'zel scoffs.
"Hatchet, then. I continue to find your company distasteful, but you are an…attractive specimen, for your kind. Physical needs often clash with those of the mind."
"An attractive specimen?" Shadowheart snorts, willing her heart to stop thundering in her chest. For her centre to stop aching. "You gith really have a way with words."
"Words are not needed. Only actions. Only heat."
Heat is certainly what's tearing through Shadowheart's defenses. Heat, and thrill, and shame, and frantic need -
"No matter how desperate I get," Shadowheart says through gritted teeth, "I'm not that desperate."
But her body is betraying her. It's responding to Lae'zel's suggestion, rising like a well-stoked fire, and Lae'zel lowers herself to the ground near Shadowheart's feet. Shadowheart's legs shift to accommodate her in an instinct so bone-deep that she can't stop it before Lae'zel is filling the space.
"Give in to your desires, istik. Submit to me. In my experience," Lae'zel says, crawling slowly up Shadowheart's willing body, "the hatred will only make it sweeter."
And then Shadowheart is being kissed so thoroughly that she forgets her own name.
All cognitive function ceases beyond the places they're touching. Lae'zel's kiss is rough without being sloppy, pure command, and Shadowheart is lost to it as the full force of her need is unleashed like a breaking dam. It's Shadowheart's hands pushing down Lae'zel's trousers, suddenly. It's Shadowheart tearing at the buckles of her underwear, and then Lae'zel's hands give assistance in getting her out of her own confining clothes until they're naked and almost flush with each other. Lae'zel is hovering over her, wiry muscles flexed, her fragrant hair hanging down to brush against Shadowheart's breasts.
For the first time, Shadowheart notices that Lae'zel has no bellybutton. There's a slight divot where one should be, but no actual opening; and while the hair between her legs is thick and coarse, she has none anywhere else besides her head. Strange, and yet so mesmerising. Lae'zel's eyes burn through Shadowheart to the quick. Her hand hovers near Shadowheart's pelvis, nails digging in, toying with dark hair. But not yet dipping lower.
"Lady of sorrows, forgive me," Shadowheart whispers.
And she spreads her legs.
Lae'zel wastes no time. She moves down Shadowheart's body as soon as permission has been given, biting harsh marks into the soft and vulnerable skin of her belly, and when the gith settles between her thighs and immediately applies her tongue to Shadowheart's aching cunt she almost comes out of her skin.
She doesn't want to dignify Lae'zel with eye contact while she works, but nor can she bring herself to look away. It's as if she's kept there by some kind of magic. Lae'zel's eyes are one of the first things Shadowheart noticed about her – they're luminous, large and dramatic and uniquely coloured. The war-paint she smears beneath them only accentuates that. Beautiful, in their own way. If only they weren't attached to someone so absolutely insufferable –
Lae'zel's teeth sink into Shadowheart's inner thigh. The pain makes her hiss, but only seems to draw her orgasm nearer.
"Focus," Lae'zel snarls, dragging her sharp nails down the outer part of Shadowheart's thighs. Shadowheart manages to scoff.
"Maybe I would if you were doing a better job of it."
Lae'zel takes that as the challenge it is. Her eyes brighten with a savage kind of pleasure, narrowing slightly, and before Shadowheart can truly prepare herself Lae'zel has seized her by the hips, pulled her forward, and pushed one of her legs up so far that Shadowheart can feel the stretch in the back of her thigh. Lae'zel holds it in the air, opening her up completely in a way that feels more obscene somehow – like she's on display, and Lae'zel has access to every inch of her. And the gith takes full advantage.
From that point, Shadowheart is holding on for dear life. She doesn't want to give Lae'zel the satisfaction of winning, but she's on the edge from the moment Lae'zel took control and spiralling fast – the gith's tongue is relentless, long and dextrous, and her eyes aren't just watching Shadowheart but seeming to languish in watching her fall apart so easily.
The moment she digs her sharp nails into Shadowheart's hips hard enough to draw eight tiny points of blood is the moment Shadowheart is lost. She comes hard on Lae'zel's tongue, pressing the pillow against her face to muffle her helpless whimpers, and she's still shaking with it when Lae'zel's mouth pulls away from her.
"So you like pain, do you?" Lae'zel says, wiping her mouth and leaving Shadowheart agonizingly untouched for a moment. Shadowheart's leg touches the ground again – Lae'zel seems hardly worse for wear after holding it up for so long – and Shadowheart flexes it, feeling her hip socket pop.
She doesn't want Lae'zel to stop. She's far from sated, her first orgasm only seeming to intensify the craving for another. And Lae'zel knows it. Her expression of smug satisfaction is enough to know that.
"And one was not enough, I see," Lae'zel says, low and drawling and confident in a way Shadowheart dearly wishes she hadn't just earned. "How needy you are."
Shadowheart is needy. She's a creature of need, consumed by it entirely and craving more still; so recently she held a knife to Lae'zel's neck, determined to gut her before the gith decided to get rid of her first. And now she's insatiable, pulling Lae'zel's hand between her legs, spreading herself like a harlot and borderline begging.
"Gods, just shut up. Just shut up and -"
Lae'zel slides two fingers inside her without further teasing, and the breath leaves Shadowheart's body. She presses them deep and, finding Shadowheart so ready that they glide in with no resistance, stretches her with a third until she's taking half of Lae'zel's slim but long-fingered hand. Her thumb rests over Shadowheart's clit, slicking back and forth and pressing into it with every hard thrust. It's exactly what Shadowheart needs – sharp teeth scraping against her throat, long nails against her inner walls, a pace so abruptly rough and merciless that she can already feel the pleasant bruising it's going to leave against her cunt. It's perfect.
And Shadowheart hates the knowledge that Lae'zel is the only person who can give it to her.
Shadowheart only realizes the loud, wanton noises she's been making when Lae'zel slaps a hand over her mouth to muffle them. The gith bites down hard on her shoulder, sending sparks of delicious pain directly to her clit which are only intensified by her words.
"Quiet. Unless you would like the whole camp to know who brings you to your knees," Lae'zel murmurs. She nips at Shadowheart's ear next, drawing her tongue along the pointed length of it. "Or perhaps that is what you wish. For all to know how easily you submit to me."
Shadowheart wants to deny it. She wants to fight back, to push Lae'zel away and scoff at her feeble attempts to dominate her, but her words are sweet poison and Shadowheart drinks every drop. Lae'zel's fingers feel so fucking good, stretching her hard and full and giving exactly the punishment Shadowheart deserves for her wicked desires, and the hand over her mouth is only making it all better. She's close. She's so close, everything tensing around Lae'zel's hand, arching up into her teeth –
The wound on Shadowheart's hand flares with purple light. A reminder from Shar – a punishment for her pleasure. Retribution for her indulgence.
It hurts, of course. An excruciating pain as always, a grounding pain, but in combination with everything else it feels different this time. It feels exquisite. It heightens the pleasure, makes it sharper and more all-consuming. The shame of being perceived by Shar like this, helpless and subservient and consumed by her lust - against the barrier of Lae'zel's hand Shadowheart screams in agony and ecstasy as it all crests, breaking her open to spill all over the bedroll in wild, blasphemous pulses -
She comes so hard that she wets Lae'zel's hand to the wrist.
Lae'zel moves her hand from Shadowheart's mouth as she gasps for air in the aftermath of it. Everything seems to echo, drowned out by the bass drum of her heart. The pain in her hand is beginning to fade, her sweat cooling, and she's not sure she's ever experienced such a moment of concentrated euphoria followed by such a tidal wave of mortification. She can hardly get a solid breath, trembling from head to toe, and Lae'zel gives her no quarter.
"I hope my skill has not exhausted you," Lae'zel says, her fingers slipping free and leaving Shadowheart agonizingly empty. She almost catches Lae'zel's arm to keep her inside for a bit longer, but manages to cling to her few remaining scraps of dignity. "Do not think I would leave without finding completion myself."
The shame of giving in to this need is acute. But just as acute is the most sublime sense of satiety Shadowheart has ever felt, and even with the ghost of pain still radiating from her hand, she feels settled for the first time in weeks.
"And what if I said I'd rather die than touch you?" Shadowheart says breathlessly, but all the bite is taken out of the statement by the shaking aftermath of the best orgasm of her life. Lae'zel scoffs.
"Chk. Then I would say you are lying to both of us."
Shadowheart kisses Lae'zel this time, grabbing a fistful of her soft hair and pulling her down hard, and she manages – because Lae'zel allows her to, no doubt, which is uniquely galling – to flip them so that Lae'zel is beneath her. Lae'zel is as single-minded here as she was when her tongue was between Shadowheart's legs, laying claim to Shadowheart's mouth like it's her own personal battleground, and she tastes like salt and copper and desire distilled. She tastes like Shadowheart's own arousal.
She'd never admit as much to Lae'zel, but Shadowheart is relieved that the gith wants to be touched. The last thing she wants is to give Lae'zel the satisfaction of having done all the work. She wants the chance to prove herself. To take Lae'zel apart just as expertly. Lae'zel is moving against her impatiently, and it's pleasing to know that she's as eager for it as Shadowheart was even if she hasn't yet resorted to begging.
Shadowheart gets the feeling that Lae'zel would rather fall on her own sword than stoop so low.
She has no idea to what degree gith anatomy resembles any other race, but she's determined to figure it out without letting on how little she knows. So Shadowheart eases her hand between them, and to the tune of Lae'zel's assenting grunt she plunges three fingers in to the knuckles. Lae'zel meets her with insistent hips, setting the pace she wants – hard, fast, violent – and though she can tell that Lae'zel is trying to keep composed, Shadowheart revels in each tiny indication otherwise.
"You're just as wet for me, aren't you?" Shadowheart pants, putting every ounce of strength she can muster into fucking Lae'zel with as much zeal as Lae'zel did for her. "I can feel it. You want this. Did you enjoy making a dirty istik come?"
"You are a means to an end," Lae'zel snarls. She moves into each of Shadowheart's thrusts, strong hands gripping at Shadowheart's lower back. One wraps itself around Shadowheart's braid, making a tight fist and tugging at it until Shadowheart's head snaps back slightly. Shadowheart bites back a pathetic whimper. Whether by luck or by skill Lae'zel has managed to find a myriad of the things Shadowheart likes, some unknown even to herself. "A tool which is about to lose its usefulness."
But Lae'zel's voice is weak. She's panting, her legs spread and her cunt hot and needy; Shadowheart curls her fingers, hoping that this part of half-elf and human anatomy translates to gith.
She's rewarded with an honest-to-god moan, and her lips curl into a satisfied grin. She presses harder.
"Then why did you do it twice?"
Lae'zel has no answer. Shadowheart bites hard on her lower lip, and as the Lae'zel starts to crumble she luxuriates in finally gaining the upper hand.
She puts everything into fucking Lae'zel. Into keeping up with her insistent pace, letting anger fuel her as the muscles of her upper arm burn with exertion. Lae'zel is putting her through her paces, and she refuses to be found wanting.
"Ah – perhaps you are less fragile than you look, ska'keth," Lae'zel grunts. She's tight on Shadowheart's hand, clearly close but refusing to be pushed over yet just as Shadowheart did. It's infuriating, as is the backhanded compliment.
"Gods, do you ever stop talking?" Shadowheart hisses.
She kisses Lae'zel again, hard and borderline vicious. To quiet her, of course. Not because she already craves the taste of her. It's all teeth and tongue, harsh and unyielding, and in it the points of Lae'zel's teeth finally split the skin of Shadowheart's lip. The taste of Lae'zel turns sharp and coppery, and as it turns out, Lae'zel was right. The hatred does make it sweeter. The tadpole in Shadowheart's head seems to thrive on whatever connection they're maintaining, seeming to want to link with Lae'zel's as she approaches orgasm, but Shadowheart grits her teeth and fights against it tooth and nail.
The last thing she needs is for Lae'zel to see how much she likes this.
When Lae'zel comes around her fingers with a low, pleased sound that shouldn't be as intoxicating to hear as it is, Shadowheart isn't sure what she was expecting. A moment of quiet, perhaps, or even gods forbid a thank you – but what she gets is Lae'zel rising and dressing herself with military precision. Shadowheart lays on the bedroll, sweaty and still catching her breath, and just as Lae'zel is about to push through the tent-flap she pauses.
"I hope to see you less distracted in the coming days," she says, in a tone that's as close as Shadowheart has ever heard to civil. "You must be focused in our approach to the creche. Once we are cleansed, we may be rid of each other."
And she leaves without another word.
Shadowheart lies in the bed she made, sore and sated and absolutely humiliated, until sleep takes her.
The morning finds Shadowheart naked, wrapped in blankets still damp with her own come. Her pillow is halfway across the tent, and everything hurts - her muscles ache. The claw-marks Lae'zel left on her hips have started to scab. Her mouth is sore from the violence of Lae'zel's kisses, split at the corner, and she has two distinct purpling bite-marks on her shoulder and inner thigh. Both are areas covered by her armour, thankfully.
She could heal them, but the pain is strangely…pleasant. Shadowheart feels invigorated by it. Well-rested, and ready to face the day. She presses against the one on her shoulder with two fingers, and the soreness of it is bracing.
Lae'zel hardly spares her a glance when Shadowheart exits the tent. They're moving camp today, preparing to take on the mountain pass and search for Lae'zel's creche, and the gith is busy packing up her things when Shadowheart emerges.
"Morning!" Karlach calls cheerfully, waving from her own fully-packed area. "You had a lie-in today, yeah?"
Shadowheart doesn't meet her gaze. "I struggled in falling asleep."
"Something troubling you?" Wyll asks, helpfully starting to dig Shadowheart's tent poles out of the ground for her. Shadowheart shrugs.
"No. Just a restless night."
Tav pipes in, perched near Karlach and re-stringing her lyre. "Hey, what's up with your lip?"
Shadowheart touches the scab, wishing now that she'd been smart enough to at least heal up the one visible remnant of the night. "Bit it in my sleep."
"Are you sure you're all right? You're acting strange –"
"By Vlaakith's name, enough of this talk!" Lae'zel snaps loudly, whirling around to pin Wyll with a glare. "Must you all discuss your feelings at every turn? It is a waste of time. We must find the creche before -"
"Hey, you slept in too! Time-waster," Karlach jokes easily, intercepting Lae'zel's rant in a way only the Tiefling could manage. "Did you two have a sleepover or what?"
Shadowheart's breath catches. The abject horror of actual discovery washes over her – the idea of any of them, let alone all of them, knowing she'd allowed Lae'zel to - but Gale interjects with a hearty laugh.
"Oh, can you imagine? One of them would be dead by morning, I'm sure."
Everyone else laughs, too, and in the welcome shade of their disbelief Shadowheart focuses on packing up. Lae'zel is silent, shoving her tent into a bag. But Shadowheart could swear the gith's cheeks have darkened.
She heals her lip before breakfast, but the bruises take two weeks to fade.
The creche is an unmitigated disaster from start to finish.
Shadowheart never particularly wanted to go there in the first place. Lae'zel's claim that they could purify everyone of their parasites seemed too good to be true, and she's been discomfited from the start with the idea of marching the artifact entrusted to her by Shar directly into the hands of a monastery full of Githyanki. But she followed Tav into the viper's nest, and from there everything has spiralled wildly out of control.
Watching Lae'zel scream in anguish as the Zaith'isk pierces her mind is an experience she doesn't ever want to re-live. She's wanted to hurt Lae'zel herself before. She'd almost killed her not long ago, and wouldn't have lost any sleep over it at the time. But seeing someone else hurt her like this now, someone she trusted so readily? One of her own people? It makes even Shadowheart angry on her behalf.
Karlach lands the final blow on the so-called Doctor as they fight their way out, separating her head from her shoulders in a clean swing, but Shadowheart gives the rolling skull a hateful kick as they hurry out of the infirmary.
Even Shadowheart could never have guessed that Lae'zel's unwavering loyalty to her people would be rewarded by a bounty on her head.
Lae'zel is different after they've defied Vlaakith and fought their way out of the creche. She professes to still be Vlaakith's most loyal servant, claims that this is a spiritual test she aims to conquer for her queen's favour. But she's quiet and withdrawn while Tav talks with Halsin over whether to continue through the mountain pass or to double back and take the safer Underdark route to Moonrise Tower, not offering her usual strong opinions. She seems almost…sad. Wounded by the failure of her plan, and the ease with which her people turned on her. She stays by her isolated tent down near the edge of the cliff. Shadowheart can hardly even see her from the vantage point of her own bed.
Not that she spends too much time looking. She has her own prayers to focus on.
The Underdark is a long, dark, depressing slog. There's beauty in it, in the glowing mushrooms and sentient fungi and the comforting blanket of darkness, but it's also dangerous and labyrinthine. They fight and walk and try not to breathe in too many spores, and Shadowheart occupies herself with watching Lae'zel struggle to acclimate to being on the run from her own people.
She seems lost, deferring to Tav's leadership. She's civil to Shadowheart but mostly keeps her distance, and the distance only makes Shadowheart more curious. She has the strangest impulse to help, but no idea how to even begin to do so.
The gith seems to pour her frustration into battle. She fights more viciously than ever, often clearing half the battlefield before anyone else can get a chance, and by night Shadowheart is so consumed by the images her ferocity burns into her brain that she has to take care of the problem herself.
Whether Lae'zel hears it or not, she doesn't come to Shadowheart's tent again.
Even with the Underdark's worse qualities, once they've left it for the shadow-cursed lands it seems preferable to the alternative. The curse doesn't affect Shadowheart the way it does the others – Shar's blessing, gifted to her for her devotion – but there's no more time to indulge in her strange fixation with the gith on their approach to Moonrise. Everyone is too consumed by desperately trying to keep hold of their sanity, and Shadowheart's fixation turns instead to Shar. To her destiny. To being a Dark Justiciar.
And then Shadowheart forsakes everything she's ever known on the word of a caged Aasimar. They free the Nightsong, fight death himself, and the world starts to end as an army marches on Baldur's Gate. And Shadowheart loses everything.
The punishment for abandoning her goddess is constant and agonizing. The wound on her hand flares up with more frequency than ever, and to top it all off, Shadowheart's damn hair turns white. A Selûnite's brand. A mark of everything she's been trained to despise.
The entire camp is quieter than usual when they approach Baldur's Gate. Everyone is caught up in their own personal struggles – Astarion with drawing nearer to his detested sire, Wyll with the prospect of seeing his father, Karlach and Tav with the ever-increasing heat of the Tiefling's engine. Gale pores over his books in search of hints about the Crown of Karsus, and Lae'zel is still reeling over last night's revelation about Orpheus. Even when presented with irrefutable evidence that her queen is far from what she claims to be, manipulating the Githyanki from the start to feed her own corrupted undeath, Lae'zel seems to be struggling to accept it.
The only one unaffected seems to be Halsin, who sits happily by his tent whittling animals from wood.
Shadowheart wishes she could have his indifference towards the city. She knows without a doubt that the moment she steps foot there she'll be watched from the shadows, hunted for her insolence by the very people she was supposed to deliver the Astral Prism to. Even wandering around the outskirts of the city, she can feel their eyes on her.
Tav and Karlach are off indulging in some silly dryad's love-test in the Rivington carnival Karlach insisted they waste time at when Lae'zel first sees fit to mention the change Shadowheart has undergone in the last week. The gith stands with her arms crossed, staring at Tav and Karlach – who are looking rather comatose, eyes closed while they commune with the nature-spirit – and she doesn't look away from them when she speaks.
"Your hair."
Shadowheart bristles. Everyone so far has been quiet about it, but Shadowheart finds herself feeling rather defensive nonetheless. "What about it?"
Lae'zel swallows. Shadowheart can see the bob of her throat. "It is…nice."
Shadowheart blinks. All the witty retorts she'd been considering evaporate; Lae'zel is still looking straight ahead so hard that it's surprising Tav hasn't been startled out of her trance by the sheer force of it.
"Nice?" Shadowheart parrots blankly. Lae'zel nods.
"It suits you."
Shadowheart almost laughs. It's so absurd, so wildly out of character for the gith, that she hardly knows how to respond.
"…thank you?"
"I believe you have made the right decision," Lae'zel continues curtly, though it seems like each word is exceedingly difficult. "Seeing Aylin and Isobel reunited is…good."
Shadowheart does chuckle, this time. The Aasimar and her paramour have been going at each other constantly since they left Moonrise, hardly giving the camp a single night free of listening to their coupling. They are rather sweet together, and after 100 years apart Shadowheart doesn't begrudge them their (by the sounds of it, truly earth-shattering) lovemaking, but it's been making the ache of Shadowheart's own desires even worse. Something she's unexpectedly reminded of right now.
Her wound flares, flashing black and purple with excruciating light. Shadowheart hisses. She holds it to her chest, closing her eyes until the pain passes.
"Sometimes I wonder," she mutters, rubbing at the black spot.
"Do not doubt your convictions."
Lae'zel's voice is firm, but Shadowheart huffs. "What convictions? I let Shar shape me. Let her followers mould me as they saw fit, take my memories and replace them with whatever they wanted. And I never thought to ask questions until…"
Lae'zel finally looks at her, then. The intensity of her gaze almost makes Shadowheart take a step back, but she holds her ground.
"Nor did I. We were both of us deceived. And we will both overcome."
Perhaps she's particularly self-absorbed, but Shadowheart hadn't put much thought into their similarities before. Lae'zel is so alien, so distinctly different than anyone Shadowheart has ever met. But like Shadowheart, she was lied to and used by her goddess. Manipulated. She's had her whole world turned upside down as well, been forced to make a decision that puts her at violent odds with everything she's ever known.
It's strange to think of herself as similar to the Lae'zel in any way, but at the same time it makes complete sense.
Tav and Karlach start to stir as if waking from a refreshing sleep. They're looking at each other with such soft reverence, their hands tightly joined, and Shadowheart does take an immediate step back now when she realizes that she and Lae'zel are standing closer together than the two lovers.
"Since when do you have any respect for me whatsoever?" Shadowheart says in an undertone. Lae'zel steps closer, eliminating the distance Shadowheart just made and not yet following when Tav and Karlach leave the dryad to head towards the nearby stage where a clown performance is starting.
"I thought you soft. Weak. But you are stronger than you appear," Lae'zel says. Her breath is light and warm, and smells like the herbs she chews to clean her teeth. Fresh and fragrant. "You have done well, Shadowheart."
Lae'zel turns on her heel and follows Tav, but Shadowheart is rooted to the spot. The tips of her ears are burning with something she'd rather not think about.
You have done well.
Praise. From Lae'zel. Such a simple thing to crave and never be given, throughout Shadowheart's life – so rarely did she receive it that it hits her now like the swipe of a dragon's tail. And Lae'zel gives it freely, of all people.
Shadowheart moves to follow the group, but she's stopped by the dryad's slow, lilting voice.
"Your eyes, stira," Zethino says, every word like a warm breeze as Shadowheart stares into them. "There is pain. Endless and deep. But there is also something more."
"Excuse me?" Shadowheart says, willing the blood to leave her cheeks. Zethino tilts her head curiously. She doesn't seem to realize she's given offense at all.
"Your companions are not the only ones devoted to each other, I think."
Shadowheart's stomach plummets. She glances toward Lae'zel's retreating back – far out of earshot, thankfully – and then back at the dryad with the most harrowing glare she can manage.
"Whatever service you're offering, charlatan, I have no interest."
She storms away after the group, leaving the dryad behind, but Zethino's words stay with her for days afterward.
Lae'zel's verve returns day by day after discovering Orpheus in the Prism. She has a new purpose, and she dedicates herself to it wholeheartedly - she's finally shaking off the shackles of her lich queen, relinquishing what remained of her devotion, and it makes her much more pleasant to be around. They even have a few civil conversations by the fire. Lae'zel shows more interest in the city and the world at large, even asking questions of Shadowheart or the others that make it seem like her desire to return to the Astral Plane is waning. Shadowheart finds herself enjoying Lae'zel's company. And, more often, thinking back on their night together with a certain fondness. A few times she even considers crossing the distance between their tents, but her pride keeps her in her own.
It makes it all the more jarring when Lae'zel is taken.
Shadowheart is too preoccupied with rats and darkness and the bloody smell of the sewers they've been wandering around for hours to notice anything is off besides the obvious grievous injuries when Lae'zel approaches them, bloody and limping. Too concerned by the blood running down Lae'zel's torso, her bruised face and the words she's saying. It's not safe here. It's too late for me. But not for you.
But there's something strange about the words. Lae'zel's mannerisms are different – the way she holds her injuries, drawing attention to them rather than stubbornly pretending they don't bother her at all. Her speech pattern. Her eyes. Their depth is gone, their hidden warmth. There's no spark of emotion, positive or negative, when her gaze meets Shadowheart's.
Run. As fast as your legs can carry you.
Lae'zel would never suggest running from a fight. And she hardly ever presses her words together like that. Each word she speaks is precise and carefully placed. It is, not it's. Always.
Shadowheart fights a wave of vicious nausea as Tav reaches to examine the wound in Lae'zel's belly, concerned and still peppering Lae'zel with questions. Shadowheart grabs her arm.
"Tav," Shadowheart says shakily. "That isn't Lae'zel."
Orin the Red smiles with Lae'zel's mouth.
It takes everything in Shadowheart not to strike the shapeshifter down then and there. But Tav is maddeningly diplomatic about the whole thing, agreeing to kill Gortash in exchange for Lae'zel's life, and the moment Orin disappears in a cloud of red mist Shadowheart turns on their fearless leader.
"Are you insane? Bartering with that maniac while she has Lae'zel trapped somewhere?" Shadowheart says, barely keeping her voice below a shout. Tav raises hers to match.
"What do you expect me to do? If we had killed her here, the rest of the Bhaalists might have killed Lae'zel in retaliation. Or just for fun."
"We need to storm the temple of Bhaal," Shadowheart insists, her grip tight on her spear. She wants to bury it so deep in Orin's treacherous chest that Selûne's light destroys her from the inside out. "We need to get Lae'zel back, now."
"Since when are you so concerned about her? Back at the Grove you almost killed her yourself," Tav asks. It's a reasonable question, admittedly, but the last one Shadowheart wants to answer right now.
"She's part of our team. Are you just going to abandon her?"
"Of course not!"
Karlach steps between them, large hands raised as a barrier. "Hey, hey! We're all getting a little heated, here. How's about we just take a few steps back and calm down?"
Tav sighs, rubbing the bridge of her nose.
"Shadowheart, I'm sorry. But Lae'zel is strong. She can handle herself while we kill Gortash," Tav says. Her tone, usually light and jovial, is firm. "I won't risk Orin killing her outright if we show up without his Netherstone."
They head back to camp to re-evaluate and plan, but every moment spent in idleness while Lae'zel suffers somewhere below them is maddening.
Shadowheart's first thought upon seeing Lae'zel's body laid out on the sacrificial table in the Temple of Bhaal, armourless and vulnerable with Orin's knife at her throat, is that she looks…small. Fragile. Her eyes are closed, and her whole body seems suffused with sickly light. She's being held there somehow. And the moment Orin begins to suspect that Tav has no intention of handing over the Netherstones, she does exactly what Shadowheart feared – she raises the knife, and plunges it down towards Lae'zel's heart.
Tav nocks an arrow. Karlach grips her axe and starts to sprint, raging, towards the dais. Jaheira's bones start to pop as she shifts form into a massive, growling jaguar. But none of them are fast enough. Orin's knife is far, still too far out of everyone's range – it's going to plunge into Lae'zel before anyone can stop her.
Shadowheart reacts with a power she didn't know she had.
Time seems to slow to a halt. Orin's weapon, Karlach's charge, Tav pulling back the bowstring – all things narrow to a point in time that seems infinite. The Spear of Night feels hot in her hand, buzzing with divine magic. Vibrating against her palm.
"Selûne," Shadowheart whispers, the only sound she can hear besides the pounding of her own heart. "Lady of Moonlight. Please. Aid me."
She raises the spear, pointed at the slowly narrowing gap between Orin's blade and Lae'zel's chest, and the temple fills with blinding moonbeams.
Time re-starts itself, and the silence erupts into screams. Tav and Karlach cover their eyes, Jaheira yowls in her jaguar form, but Shadowheart stares straight into it as magic courses through her body and almost every enemy in the vicinity disintegrates in the holy light.
All but Orin, who reels back – her blade missing Lae'zel by mere inches – and shrieks as her humanoid form shifts into something monstrous. Long, spiky limbs, bony body, an insectoid face – Orin's newly-revealed mandibles open to reveal a gaping maw, roaring her displeasure, and she climbs over the altar to drag herself straight towards Shadowheart.
Karlach and Tav are still squinting, unable to see through the light; Jaheira lunges, but misses by a wide margin. Orin is drawing near, bleeding heavily but focused solely on Shadowheart, and Shadowheart draws every drop of focus within her to send a guiding bolt hurtling at her so hard and fast that all that remains when the light fades away is a smoldering husk.
Shadowheart almost falls to her knees. All energy seems to have seeped from her with the bolt, leaving her shaking and weak, but then Lae'zel stirs and Shadowheart is in motion before Karlach can offer a hand. She stumbles to the altar, willing her magic to respond to her commands as she looks for something to heal. Something to restore. But Lae'zel seems unharmed. Physically, at least.
Lae'zel's eyes open. They're hazy and unfocused, even as Karlach finally reaches them and helps her to a sitting position.
"Shadowheart?" Lae'zel rasps. Tav and Jaheira are grouped around them now, and her attention extends to them. "Tav. You came for me.”
"Course we did. You're all right now," Karlach says, soft and comforting. Karlach's broad hand is on Lae'zel's back, but it's Shadowheart that she leans on as she slides down from the altar on shaking limbs. She's never seen Lae'zel so weak before – was she fed at all during her captivity? Was she ever released from the binding magic that held her here? Did she spend days on this altar, waiting for rescue?
The others, knowing that Lae'zel will want as few spectators to her weakness as possible, give them a wide berth while Shadowheart props a shoulder under Lae'zel's to help her to standing.
"Orin – is she –"
"She's dead," Shadowheart says quietly. Lae'zel breathes an almost imperceptible sigh of relief.
"Shadowheart killed her. Killed everyone!" Karlach says loudly, busy helping Tav to pry Orin's Netherstone out of her blade. "Barely had my socks on and she'd already struck the fuckers down!"
"Nobody else got a hit in," Tav confirms. She laughs a little, kicking at what remains of Orin's body. "I guess the switch to Selûne was the right choice, huh?"
She and Karlach head to Orin's room to ransack it for whatever they can find, and Shadowheart puts aside her own exhaustion to help Lae'zel towards the stairs.
"Did she hurt you?"
"No," Lae'zel says, still low and gravelly. "Simply…held me. Some dark magic. I could not move. Could not fight." Threads of fear wind their way through her voice with each admission. She lets Shadowheart help her up the steps; Tav and Karlach are still ransacking Orin's room, and Jaheira is staring up at the statue of Bhaal.
"Death does not frighten me," Lae'zel says quietly after a few steps. Her usual aggression is gone. "But to die without a weapon in my hand…paralyzed…helpless…" The fear in her voice is obvious now, out of earshot of everyone else. "It is not in a Githyanki's nature to say thank you. Our language does not even have a phrase for it."
Shadowheart waits. She helps Lae'zel up three more steps.
"Thank you," Lae'zel murmurs.
She clings to Shadowheart until they reach the surface.
Lae'zel recovers. She goes right back to cracking skulls with Tav, hunting down more allies for their fight against the Elder Brain, but though she has no physical wounds something else seems to linger.
Lae'zel is distracted. Distant. Much like after the creche, Shadowheart often looks across the little square where their tents are pitched at night to see her kneeling in her meditation stance, palms up, but there's no clearness of the mind – she's staring down at her hands like her thoughts are a million miles away. She hardly leaves her tent unless Tav needs her, and Shadowheart sees more empty wine bottles there than she's used to.
Finally, Shadowheart goes to her.
Lae'zel hardly acknowledges her presence. The tent flap flutters closed behind her, and Lae'zel finishes doffing her armour without a glance at it.
"Do you need something, elf?"
"Half-elf. And I think you need something," Shadowheart says, for once allowing her attention to drift unhindered and shame-free to the shifting muscles of Lae'zel's back. "A distraction, perhaps. You've been different since you returned to us."
"I am well," Lae'zel says with almost none of her usual colour. "Do not worry yourself over my health."
Shadowheart is used to the colour. To the shifting tones of Lae'zel's voice, the dramatic rise and fall of her passionate speech patterns. This monotone is unsettling.
"It's too late for that. I saw you in the temple of Bhaal," Shadowheart says quietly. The image haunts her still – Lae'zel's body laid out on a sacrificial altar, stripped of her armour, so fragile under the threat of Orin's knife – a single blow in the right place, and she might have -
Lae'zel's hand clenches, going instinctively for her knife as if to remind herself it's there. A gesture of comfort. As if a single blade can protect her from whatever memories are haunting her.
"She did something to you," Shadowheart says. "Your ferocity is dampened, Lae'zel. I've almost come to miss the insults you used to lob at me."
Shadowheart tries for a light tone, but Lae'zel is unresponsive. She turns when Shadowheart comes closer, looking at her warily, but when Shadowheart hooks a finger into the waist of her trousers she seems to understand.
"You helped me, once," Shadowheart says lowly. Their faces are close enough for her breath to dance over Lae'zel's face. "Allow me to do the same."
Lae'zel looks away.
"I cannot give you the domination you seek tonight, istik. It is not in me."
Her voice is heavy, so heavy, burdened with everything she's not saying. It makes Shadowheart long for something – a show of emotion, whether positive or negative. Passion or anger or even derision. Anything of the Lae'zel she knows.
"Then perhaps what you need," Shadowheart murmurs, ducking to meet Lae'zel's yellow eyes, "is to submit."
Lae'zel's face changes, then. It relaxes. And when Shadowheart kisses her, Lae'zel lets her take the lead.
It feels different than last time. Less caustic, and more desperate. Lae'zel seems to crave Shadowheart taking charge – she sighs into her mouth when Shadowheart eases it open to explore with her tongue, and she's just wrapped a hand around the back of Lae'zel's neck to deepen it further when she hears the unsheathing of a knife.
Her instinct is to draw her own, and press it to Lae'zel's heart before she can do the same. But Shadowheart has no knife in her camp clothes, and before she can take a cautious step back Lae'zel is pressing the knife – the one she keeps on her belt always, inlaid with Githyanki letters on the hilt – into Shadowheart's hand.
"What do you want me to do with this?" Shadowheart asks shakily. Lae'zel's hand closes over Shadowheart's on the handle.
"Show me the breath of life. The pain of being," Lae'zel says, her usually confident voice hushed now in a low undertone. "I want you to make me feel." Lae'zel's voice wavers on the last word, and Shadowheart understands. A trust is being given, an unimaginable faith that Shadowheart would never have anticipated receiving when they met.
Straightening her back and taking the knife fully from Lae'zel's hand, Shadowheart tugs again at the waist of Lae'zel's pants.
"Off."
With the fluidity of a soldier following orders, Lae'zel strips to her undergarment. The leather straps leave little to the imagination, and yet Shadowheart wants them gone.
"Lie down. Hands above your head," Shadowheart says, slipping back into the cold Sharran persona like lacing herself into an old corset. "And keep them there."
Lae'zel obeys. She obeys so quickly that Shadowheart wonders if this is what she wanted from the beginning, from their very first tryst. But Shadowheart doesn't rub it in. She doesn't goad, or lord her power over the gith. Perhaps if this had been before, before so many things transpired – but now she wouldn't. Not when Lae'zel is trusting her like this.
"If you need me to let up," Shadowheart says, crouching down to straddle Lae'zel's hips and holding the dagger loosely at Lae'zel's throat, "you need only say so. Say stop, and I will."
"I do not need such measures. I know my own body." Lae'zel sounds shaky, though. Shadowheart is suspecting that the reason Lae'zel needs this is because she doesn't know her own body anymore, after what Orin did. She doesn't know herself after having her worldview so twisted around so many times. She needs to recalibrate. Shadowheart can relate.
"Well perhaps I need them," Shadowheart says, pressing just enough to let the steel bite into Lae'zel's neck. A trial run, of sorts. Lae'zel responds beautifully. She arches her neck, giving Shadowheart more room to work, and she takes what Shadowheart is offering. A safety net without needing to admit defeat.
Shadowheart slides the flat of the blade down the side of Lae'zel's face. Close enough that it might shave hair if she had any there. As it is it just scrapes along smooth skin, light enough to be felt but not enough yet to make a cut.
"This thing you wear," Shadowheart says, hooking the dagger under the central strap of the garment she's come to deeply appreciate. It runs from the chest section down below the waist of Lae'zel's pants, and it's so tight that it hardly has room to pull away from Lae'zel's body. She tugs, letting the blade bite into the leather but not cutting all the way through, and holds Lae'zel's gaze. "So revealing. And yet so very…in the way."
"If it is in your way," Lae'zel growls, her hands clenching into hard fists, "then remove it."
It's as much permission as Shadowheart needs. She pulls the knife up, feeling the satisfying snick of a sharp blade through well-crafted leather. The two pieces fall back against Lae'zel's belly. With it out of the way, Shadowheart makes two more quick movements at the straps securing it to Lae'zel's shoulders, and with the tip of the knife she flicks them away to leave her top half bare.
"So much skin to choose from," Shadowheart murmurs. She drags the point of the knife along the hinge of Lae'zel's jaw, just hard enough to leave a thin scratch.
Lae'zel is responsive. Impatient. She squirms under Shadowheart, and under the cool steel her pulse is fluttering.
"Is your heart pounding?" Shadowheart whispers. She pulls the blade down Lae'zel's neck, draws it carefully across her throat – all the soft, vulnerable places above her shoulders, leaving a faint line behind. And then she leans down, and drags her mouth along the path it left. Lae'zel shudders.
"Yes."
Shadowheart bites. Hard. Lae'zel whines; a sound of approval.
When she slides the point between Lae'zel's breasts, Lae'zel thrusts herself up into it before Shadowheart can compensate. This cut is deeper, leaving a thin red line that fills with dark red blood. Dark as wine and stark against light green skin.
Lae'zel shudders with pleasure. Almost like relief – as if Lae'zel doesn't just want the threat of violence. She doesn't want faint cuts. She wants pain. She wants blood. Orin had held her for days and come close to ending her life without giving her the dignity of the battle-wounds to match, Lae'zel has been numb and lost ever since.
"Is this what you need?" Shadowheart says, pressing the dagger carefully deeper. It digs in until the sharp tip disappears. If this is Lae'zel's request, if she needs to bleed to re-connect with herself, Shadowheart can provide it – but not without explicit permission. She's administered torture to more than enough unwilling victims in her time. "Is this what you're asking me for?"
Lae'zel makes a noise, her hands flexing – but she's arching into the dagger. Her head tips back.
"Yes."
Shadowheart knows exactly what to do.
In three quick swipes Shadowheart carves a light, delicate design just under Lae'zel's breast, over her ribs. Lae'zel hisses, but looks down to see it – just three curved lines that come together, something that perhaps she used to idly draw during lessons only to get her knuckles rapped by the Mother Superior. Lae'zel's breathing is quickened. Her ribs flexing and moving, bringing thin lines of blood to the surface. But her hands stay clenched above her head. Willing. Waiting.
Shadowheart smears the blood with the flat of the dagger like gathering paint on a palette knife.
"Do not be gentle. Whatever you can give me, istik," Lae'zel says, her voice not demanding but low and raspy with what Shadowheart knows to be desire, "I can take it. Test my limits."
It's too good an invitation to refuse.
Shadowheart might have turned from Shar in the Shadowfell, but her teachings remain. She knows countless ways to draw out the most exquisite kind of pain. And Lae'zel is a willing subject. She leans into the hurt. She finds pleasure in each cut, managing to keep her hands clenched above her head even as Shadowheart stains the bedding with ruby droplets.
Using these ingrained techniques on someone who is begging for them feels antithetical to Shar in the best way Shadowheart can imagine. Like with each application of her blade, with each moan or relieved sigh from Lae'zel, she's striking back at her renounced goddess. Using her training to bring relief to the person Shar would likely most disapprove of.
The wound in her hand flares as if Shar herself can sense Shadowheart's rebellion, but she ignores it. And if Shadowheart notices tears occasionally streaking down the gith's temples, she doesn't say a word.
Lae'zel is so wet by the time Shadowheart has made a crimson canvas of her body and cut away the remaining leather that it's shining on her inner thighs, glistening in the low lamplight of her tent, and while a few weeks ago Shadowheart might have tormented her for her eagerness now it only makes her mouth water. Lae'zel had taken Shadowheart into her mouth during their last tryst, but Shadowheart hadn't had the chance to do the same. And she's been thinking about it ever since.
Lae'zel's legs part for her before Shadowheart can even press the blade to them. Her eyes have been closed for most of this, her brow furrowed in concentration or meditation as she murmurs in her own language things Shadowheart can't understand, but when Shadowheart settles herself between Lae'zel's legs and sinks her teeth into the sinewy muscle there her head snaps up.
Lae'zel's eyes are wide and damp, big and trusting and grateful when Shadowheart takes her into her mouth. It's an expression Shadowheart has never seen on her face before. And the taste of her. Lae'zel tastes not salty or bitter or earthy like others Shadowheart has known but strangely…sweet.
It's unexpected. A perception coloured by the last clinging vestiges of her old dislike for the Gith perhaps, but she'd expected it to be sharper. More severe, like Lae'zel tries to come across. Instead she tastes like this won't be the last time they do this.
She'd overheard Lae'zel mentioning once in a conversation over the fire with Karlach and Tav that Gith don't have sex to reproduce. It's purely for pleasure. And as Shadowheart moans, drawing Lae'zel in more eagerly, she can now admit that she can see the appeal. Lae'zel's hands are clenched in the bedroll, and her clit – or whatever the Githyanki equivalent is, which seems to be more of a hardened ridge just above her opening which makes Lae'zel quiver and twitch when Shadowheart lashes it with her tongue – seems to fit perfectly into Shadowheart's mouth.
One of Lae'zel's hands relinquishes the blanket. Shadowheart wonders for one thrilling moment if it's going to bury in her hair, but instead Lae'zel drags her own nails across the web of cuts criss-crossing her belly; the moan she makes at evoking that pain is rapturous. There's more slickness, more eager bucking against Shadowheart's face, almost frantic now with barely-contained hunger.
Like perhaps Shadowheart is giving Lae'zel what she needs. Succeeding in what she was asked, for once. She's failed Shar, failed her task, failed at becoming a Dark Justiciar; she's still not completely grounded in the light of Selûne. But she can do this.
Lae'zel's other hand finds Shadowheart's, still clutching the dagger. She closes her larger hand around it and pulls it up, bringing the dagger and Shadowheart's fingers both to rest just over her sternum. Point-up, towards her throat. By choice this time.
Lae'zel doesn't struggle against it now. She presses into it. Perhaps reminding herself, as Shadowheart is reminded, of how close Lae'zel has come to death so many times; both at Orin's hand, and Shadowheart's own. How close she's come to oblivion with no promise of her queen's false eternal reward. How short and brutal and fruitless life can be, when robbed of purpose. But Lae'zel is alive. Her life's blood is on Shadowheart's hands, painted across her lips, pumping hot and vital through Lae'zel's veins. She's alive. They both are. For better or for worse.
Lae'zel's eyes are shiny with an emotion beyond words when she comes on Shadowheart's tongue, arching hard against her mouth and spilling onto her chin. She doesn't look away for even a second, riding it out in long, helpless pulses with that connection pulled taut between them.
The dagger stays pressed between their hands, kissed with scarlet.
Lae'zel's head falls back against the pillow when it finally ends. Her chest is heaving, every muscle taut and quivering. She doesn't speak, but nor does she let go of Shadowheart's hand. She clutches it like a lifeline.
The last time they ended up tangled together like this she'd risen and dressed and left with hardly a word. Now, when Shadowheart moves up and settles propped on an elbow over her prone body, drawing her into a kiss that's slow and languorous, Lae'zel doesn't complain. She kisses back. She holds the back of Shadowheart's neck, pressing their foreheads together when they part.
"Zhak vo'n'ash duj," Lae'zel murmurs, sighing it against Shadowheart's mouth. She has no idea what it means. But it seems meaningful to Lae'zel, and when Shadowheart kisses her again it feels like a seal. An acceptance.
Shadowheart doesn't leave that night, and Lae'zel doesn't ask her to. Instead she heals the wounds one by one, tracing each of them with a finger glowing with Selûne's magic and watching them knit themselves up and disappear, and when it's done and they're left bare and stained with the evidence of what they've done together Lae'zel falls asleep curled in the crook of her shoulder.
Karlach and Tav are already awake when Shadowheart leaves Lae'zel's tent in the light of morning, slipping out before Lae'zel has woken. They're sitting at the edge of the raised area near the fire, chatting quietly and starting on breakfast. Shadowheart doesn't look up, but she hears a carafe of water shatter.
"Was that Shadowheart?"
"Does anyone else in this camp have white hair?" Tav says, sounding amused. "Well. Besides Astarion, but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t him. That…explains a lot, actually."
"But she was coming out of – wait, you don't think she and Lae'zel are –"
And Shadowheart doesn't care. She leaves them to their gossip, and washes the rusty red from her white braid in the privacy of her own tent.
That night becomes a turning point for Lae'zel, and for what Shadowheart might now hesitantly call their friendship.
Lae'zel's spirit returns in the days after, though she doesn't mention the cause to the others. She leaves her tent more often to spend time with the group, drinks less, and even throws insults again, but they're playful now. Affectionate, even. Istik becomes something like a term of endearment, now only ever directed at Shadowheart. Shadowheart even starts to catch her smiling at things beyond victory or violence. At jokes, or stories, or Scratch and the owlbear cub play-wrestling by the fire.
Tav and Karlach seem to have kept what they saw to themselves, but since from that night onwards Lae'zel starts coming to Shadowheart's tent every evening their discretion does nothing to stop the information from getting out.
"May I ask something?" Shadowheart remarks one such night, waiting with baited breath while Lae'zel unbuckles herself from her undergarment – she must have a stock of them, since at this point Shadowheart has destroyed at least three – and instead buckles herself into the harness they'd slipped away to buy yesterday morning. Karlach had actually suggested the place, apparently having procured one for herself and Tav when they arrived, and thus far Shadowheart's review of the thing is glowing. It fits snugly around Lae'zel's hips, with a metal ring at the front through which is secured what can only be described as a leather phallus.
It had seemed laughable when Karlach told her about it. Completely ridiculous. But after hearing the results of the thing echoing through the camp that night from Karlach's tent, Shadowheart had all but sprinted to the seedy little shop to try it herself.
"I doubt that I can stop you," Lae'zel says. She finishes with the final buckle, lowering herself to crawl between Shadowheart's knees with the thing hanging between her legs. It still looks rather silly, but Shadowheart craves it nonetheless. "Your kind are entirely too prone to fits of whimsy."
Lae'zel's grumpiness only makes Shadowheart smile. She's no longer a Githyanki threat in Shadowheart's eyes now that she knows better, no longer alien in her blunt tendencies. Her grumpiness is more akin to a disgruntled cat. She'll scratch and hiss, but in the end Shadowheart knows how to make her purr.
"When did you stop wanting to kill me?"
Lae'zel frowns. "A strange question."
"I'm curious," Shadowheart says, slipping her fingers under the straps of the harness. It tugs Lae'zel a little, but conversely keeps her from thrusting forward. "Indulge me."
Lae'zel pushes against her grip, but not hard enough to break it. Simply hard enough to make known her displeasure with the situation. "I would rather indulge you in other ways."
"Do both, then," Shadowheart says, even though denying Lae'zel what she wants is only prolonging Shadowheart's own release. "We've plenty of time. Or do you plan on plowing straight in with no build-up like an eager teenager?"
Lae'zel's eyes narrow at her cheeky tone.
"Chk. Building I can do, but you expect me to think when you are spread beneath me? I can scarcely look away from you."
Lae'zel has been freer with her praise lately, having picked up on how it affects Shadowheart. It might be embarrassing if it wasn't so effective. And Lae'zel gives it now without being prompted or asked. Small things, admiration of her effective fighting or references to her beauty and how it stokes Lae'zel's desire – all of it is free game. And Shadowheart knows Lae'zel well enough now to know that the gith has no time for meaningless white lies. If Lae'zel says it, it's because she deems it true.
I don't give compliments, Lae'zel had said once. I make observations.
Ironically for all that Shadowheart teases about build-up, it takes hardly more than those words for her body to thrum with anticipation and longing. Hardly more than Lae'zel's desire for her, her roaming eyes moving down when Shadowheart spreads her legs wider. Her distraction. She's managed to distract the most single-minded person she's ever known, and it's an aphrodisiac all its own.
Lae'zel tries to press forward, but Shadowheart angles her hips so that the device only drags along her clit, making the leather slick and slippery. She shivers, letting out a shaky breath, but she holds fast in her line of questioning out of pure stubbornness.
"So, tell me. You hated me. And then you fucked me. And now we have…this," Shadowheart says, raking her nails down Lae'zel's back. Lae'zel makes a low sound almost like a growl. "But when did you stop wanting to kill me?"
"I did not want to kill you," Lae'zel says, her gaze still fixed on Shadowheart's cunt. Shadowheart raises an eyebrow, and he prolonged silent disbelief makes Lae'zel look up again.
"I would have, had you given me reason," Lae'zel says, sounding more reasonable than Shadowheart expected. "If you had become ghaik, or kept me from my purpose. But it was not a desire."
The surprise is almost enough to override Shadowheart's arousal. She'd made the assumption all this time, but –
"You are the one who held a knife to my throat," Lae'zel continues. "Perhaps I should be asking you this question."
"I didn't want to kill you, either," Shadowheart admits. Her voice sounds small to her own ears. Lae'zel isn't accusatory, doesn't even sound bothered by the fact that Shadowheart once hovered on the precipice of cutting her throat. She simply seems curious. But it still sits heavy in Shadowheart's stomach.
"Then why attempt it?"
The answer slips out before Shadowheart has even realized she had the thought.
"I was afraid."
Lae'zel stills. She ceases the teasing movements of her hips, instead holding herself above Shadowheart with ease while she explains the thoughts that suddenly crowd the forefront of her mind.
"I already doubted that I could deliver the Prism as Shar asked. I was afraid of failing. You were the most likely to take it from me," Shadowheart says, the truth spilling out of her like a confession. "You were strong. Steadfast in your faith. And I wasn't."
"My steadfast faith got me nothing but the threat of death," Lae'zel points out. Shadowheart smiles bitterly.
"As did mine."
There's understanding in Lae'zel's eyes. Shadowheart had thought when they met that the gith must not know fear – she charges into everything headfirst, brash to a fault. Even when Shadowheart had her pinned and helpless with a knife to her neck, Lae'zel had refused to show weakness. She'd have rather died. She would have died had Tav not intervened.
But Shadowheart has felt Lae'zel's fear since, whether through their linked tadpoles or simply a better understanding of who she is. Fear of failure. Of irrelevance. Fear of the unknown life she's been thrust into, with her old comfortable worldview ripped away. She's been afraid from the moment they met on the Nautiloid. She simply doesn't show it like everyone else does.
Lae'zel is so much more complex than she'd ever thought possible, and suddenly Shadowheart is struck by how much time she wasted hating her.
"I'm sorry," Shadowheart whispers.
Lae'zel says nothing. She doesn't offer empty platitudes, or try to absolve Shadowheart of blame. It isn't her way. But she nods, and that's enough.
Shadowheart pulls her down into a crushing kiss. Lae'zel latches onto it willingly, leaving the heavy conversation behind. Pressing deeper, harder, building back up to where they left off and then higher still – the stiff length strapped to Lae'zel's hips presses against her, and this time Shadowheart uses her grip to guide Lae'zel in the right direction.
"Take me," Shadowheart murmurs, pulling Lae'zel forward by the hips until the tip is nudging at her. "I'm ready for you."
It's been easier than Shadowheart thought it would be to consider the contraption an extension of Lae'zel. It feels like one. When the whole thick length of it sinks inside her, it's Lae'zel's mouth she's moaning into; when Lae'zel takes control of the situation, holding Shadowheart's legs open to pump into her more easily, it's Lae'zel's back she clings to. She loves how this contraption gives Lae'zel two free hands to manhandle her a little. To move and prop and pose Shadowheart the way she wants. It lets Lae'zel take her by both hips to fuck her deep, and it lets her continue to hold herself up on an arm while Shadowheart pulls one of Lae'zel's strong hands up to wrap around her throat.
It's something Shadowheart wouldn't have even considered allowing before this newest development in their complicated relationship. Had she asked Lae'zel to choke her the first time they lay together, Shadowheart might have worried she would take the opportunity to actually end her right there – but that was never a worry she needed to have, apparently. And it certainly isn't one she has now. Ill-advised or not, she trusts Lae'zel.
Lae'zel takes it in stride. She flexes her hand, placing her fingers carefully in a way that only one well-trained in cutting off a person's air and blood supply would know, and Shadowheart sinks into the bedroll knowing she's in good hands.
She isn't sure why she craves this, suddenly. Is she seeking punishment for what she did all that time ago? Perhaps she simply desires it as an extension of Lae'zel's strength; maybe she only likes the way it makes her head swim. But with the fullness of Lae'zel inside her, the pounding pace, the shifting muscle of Lae'zel's back under her hands, and the pressure of a hand pressing down on her throat, Shadowheart is rapidly approaching a climax the volume of which might put Tav and Isobel to shame were she not struggling to breathe.
Like clockwork, as it always does at the height of her pleasure, the wound on Shadowheart's hand seizes and flashes with pain. It's even sharper than usual – like a dagger coated in acid has been thrust into the centre of her palm and twisted viciously. She winces, grunting her discomfort and clutching it to her chest, but this time Lae'zel doesn't simply fuck her through it – she releases Shadowheart's throat, bringing the inflicted hand to her lips and pressing a series of kisses to the black mark.
Shadowheart can almost imagine that it makes the pain go away.
She comes with her hand still pressed to Lae'zel's mouth, still panting desperately for the air her body craves. Lae'zel slows her pace but doesn't stop, letting Shadowheart ride it out while she moves from kissing Shadowheart's palm to sucking indulgently on her fingers. Her mouth is warm, and wet, and the sensation of her tongue swirling around Shadowheart's fingertips is disconcertingly arousing.
Shadowheart's fingers slip free at the same time as the device, but before Lae'zel can unbuckle and discard it for cleaning Shadowheart stops her with a wet hand planted on her chest.
"What do you think about me using this on you?"
Lae'zel's eyes light up with eager curiosity.
In the dark privacy of camp, they learn each other's bodies in ways they hadn't allowed themselves before. Shadowheart asks for new things, more vulnerable things, and Lae'zel does too – she even starts to enjoy waking next to Lae'zel each morning, even if Astarion makes irritating comments about it every time they emerge together.
It makes the burden of what Shadowheart needs to do next a little easier to bear.
She wakes on the morning they're set to go to the House of Grief before the sun even rises to find Lae'zel gone. She lays in the darkness of her tent for a time, staring up at the ceiling and listening to the pre-dawn stirrings of fishermen on the harbour with a pit of dread in her belly; Tav has been adamant about accompanying her to the House and bringing the rest of the team, but it feels like doing so will be dragging them into a trap. If Shadowheart is going to run headfirst into a wolves' den, she'd rather not get her companions killed, as well.
When finally she can't lie still any longer she rises – perhaps to take a quick walk, perhaps to slip away without the others and confront the House herself before anyone else can get themselves hurt on her behalf - and almost runs headlong into Lae'zel at the mouth of the tent. She's holding a basket of bread rolls with butter and a small teapot, steaming in the cool morning air.
"Are you leaving?" Lae'zel asks, her voice uncharacteristically soft. Shadowheart tries to side-step her, but Lae'zel turns to follow her movement.
"No, I'm just –" Shadowheart pauses, fully taking in the spread Lae'zel is holding. "…are you bringing me breakfast?"
Lae'zel holds up the teapot. "Gale informed me that it is customary on this plane to bring food to one's lover after a night of carnal pleasures."
It's about the last thing she expected to hear from Lae'zel's mouth, and Shadowheart's blush doesn't only reach her ears this time. Carnal pleasures brings to mind the activities of the evening – Lae'zel had tied her wrists to one of the tent-poles with a length of strong rope, teasing her right to the edge time and time again until Shadowheart was thrashing against the bonds, begging for release, uncaring of who heard -
And now Lae'zel is bringing her breakfast in bed.
She's going to need to have a conversation with Gale.
"You seemed restless this morning," Lae'zel continues. Shadowheart nods, swallowing hard.
"I was. I am."
Lae'zel holds up the teapot like a peace offering. "Will you stay?"
Her half-baked escape plan foiled, Shadowheart nods. She follows Lae'zel back into the tent, and Lae'zel carefully pours tea into two mismatched mugs.
"Your plan was to go to the House of Grief alone," Lae'zel says plainly, settling cross-legged and handing Shadowheart her tea. It's strong and unfamiliar, slightly bitter, but not unpleasant. A bit like Lae'zel, really. Perhaps it's a Githyanki brew.
Shadowheart sighs. "Yes. I don't want anyone else getting hurt."
"I do not want you getting hurt." Lae'zel's voice has lost its softness now – her usual aggressive tone is back, but in a way that feels more protective than anything. Shadowheart scoffs.
"I think that's inevitable at this point."
"I will not allow you to come to harm. Not while I draw breath," Lae'zel says fiercely. It's a tone Shadowheart has only really heard when Lae'zel is talking about freeing Orpheus, or defeating Vlaakith – a ferocity that borders on mania. For Shadowheart. It's confusing and nonsensical, but it makes Shadowheart feel…safe.
She can't remember the last time she felt safe. Following Shar meant constant danger. Everyone from her fellow Sharrites to her very goddess had been a possible source of torment and pain. Safety was an illusion. And it still is, in a way – no matter how fiercely Lae'zel promises protection, her promise can only reach so far. But the illogical feeling remains.
"Why?" Shadowheart asks simply. Her heart is in her throat, for some reason – this feels like a precipice of some kind, and she's not sure she's ready for what's on the other side.
"You did not need to show me compassion. And yet you did," Lae'zel murmurs. "You struck down Orin in a single glorious blow. And then you healed me, body and soul. And you asked for nothing in return."
"Lae'zel…" Shadowheart's voice dies at the end of her name, caught up in the disarming nature of her words. Lae'zel doesn't stop.
"For the Githyanki, it is a customary ritual for lovers to engage in battle," Lae'zel says, and in yet another shock to Shadowheart's system, she starts to fidget. Picking viciously at a scab on her arm from yesterday's skirmish with a fireworks merchant. "A fight, to test each other's worthiness. To give shape to mutual obsession."
Mutual obsession. A jarring phrase, but one that rings true nonetheless. What else besides obsession could have led Shadowheart to this point? Sharing her bed every night with someone she once despised with every fiber of her being?
"Are you saying you want to fight me?" Shadowheart says.
"No," Lae'zel says ardently. "I do not - and it is maddening."
Shadowheart isn't sure what to say to that. She sips at her tea for lack of anything else to do with her hands, while Lae'zel takes a few deep breaths and continues in a lower tone.
"I don't want to hurt you. I want to protect you," Lae'zel says. Her hand twitches as if to reach out, but instead she clenches her teacup harder. "I want you to protect me. And I do not wish to lose you now. If you go to the House of Grief, I go with you."
It feels as close to a confession as Lae'zel seems capable of. Almost a commitment, if she squints. It should be off-putting, terrifying, but it isn't. It feels like a natural next step in whatever twisted path they've been taking together.
Shadowheart tears a bread roll apart. It's filled with some kind of jam, sticky on her fingers.
"You said something. The night that I…" Shadowheart swallows, unable to bring herself to take an actual bite of the food just yet. "That night. Zhak vo'n'ash duj."
She rattles the strange Githyanki words off by memory, and Lae'zel takes a sharp breath.
"What does that mean?" Shadowheart asks, watching the conflict dance across Lae'zel's face. "Is it part of your ritual?"
"Yes. It means," Lae'zel hesitates before she speaks. Shadowheart has seldom seen her hesitate over anything, whether it's actions or words. Lae'zel always plunges in headfirst. "It means that you are the source of my bruises. A bond, among my people."
Shadowheart isn't sure exactly what that means. Source of my bruises. But based on Lae'zel's description of Githyanki mating rituals, she can take a vague guess.
"It is difficult to express in your languages," Lae'zel says, her voice coloured with frustration. "There is more. But – but I do not know how to say it. I don't know what to call it. I just know that whatever happens next…I want you near."
Shadowheart can't imagine the courage it's taking for Lae'zel to say this. So openly, so earnestly. A courage that Shadowheart could never muster. The person she once tried to kill, who pinned her to the ground and told her that hatred makes it sweeter, is a distant memory.
For once, Shadowheart doesn't tangle the decision up in doubts. She's spent so much of her life in her own head - obeying and forgetting and trying to remember, following orders and then bucking them. Torn back and forth by her own wavering loyalties. Maybe just once she can have something for herself, as illogical a thing it might be.
It seems to take an effort more gargantuan than wielding a mace or felling a wild beast, but Shadowheart reaches out a hand, palm-up, and waits.
The shuddery breath Lae'zel lets out is pure relief. She takes Shadowheart's hand, lacing their fingers together, and until the rest of the camp starts to stir Shadowheart allows herself this moment of stillness.
-
The House of Grief is far worse than Shadowheart could have anticipated.
Every room evokes a foggy memory, half-formed. Learning the intricacies of manipulation and seduction, of blending in with the environment, in one room; practicing endless methods of torture and interrogation in another. Obeying the Mother Superior. And always, always feeling out of place. The teachings that came so easily to everyone else always felt like a mask she was putting on, and even with most of it cut from her memory she remembers the feeling of otherness.
She hardly knows if the people she's killing were once friends. She cuts them down regardless, cutting through their magical darkness with Selûne's light, and Lae'zel never leaves her side as promised. They fight back-to-back, with Tav firing shots down from one of the daises and Karlach drawing as much attention as possible near the entrance with huge, arcing swings of her greataxe.
It's Lae'zel who strikes down Viconia DeVir.
She leaves her bleeding viciously but still alive, allowing Shadowheart to interrogate her, and when Shadowheart gives her blessing for Tav to do with the Mother Superior what she will it's Lae'zel who brings her greatsword down into the drow's heart so ferociously that the tip buries itself between the stone tiles under her back. And after the Threshold of Loss, after Shadowheart has found and then lost all hope of once again having a family, she hovers near as they leave. Always close, but never speaking.
Shadowheart manages to keep it all inside – slaying her former mentor, letting go of her parents, the unravelling of her entire life from top to bottom – until they get back to camp. Tav has the good grace to leave her alone, and Shadowheart goes to a private place to fall apart in peace - a small grove, a haven near the camp on the city's outskirts with a statue of Selûne, overgrown and forgotten. She sinks to her knees in front of the sculpture, shaking like a leaf.
Harrowleaf. Jenevelle Harrowleaf. A girl with a past. A name that feels as foreign as the parents who spoke it.
She takes her hair down from the braid she's worn as long as she can remember, combing shaky fingers through it over and over until the tangles cease. She'd thought her hairstyle was an act of rebellion as a child only for it to be apparently part of her heritage, a reflection of Selûne, and then it was changed by her new goddess without a thought for her own wants. For a brief moment she considers cutting it all off, taking a dagger and shaving it to the scalp and leaving it in a pile for Selûne and Shar to fight over –
Lae'zel's footsteps approaching from behind are soft, but Shadowheart still hears them.
"You did well today."
The praise hits hollow. Shadowheart laughs, sharp and bitter. "I killed my parents."
"You freed them. And yourself," Lae'zel corrects. She appears in Shadowheart's periphery, moving slow as if she's approaching a wounded animal. "Do not disregard what they wanted for you."
"What would you know?" Shadowheart bites out, her head snapping in Lae'zel's direction. The gith is completely still in the face of her lashing out. A bastion of calm. Her eyes are soft, and Shadowheart sighs, adding guilt onto the flaming pile of emotions she's trying to smother.
"I'm sorry. I don't – I don't know what to do," Shadowheart says, unable to stop her voice from breaking as her chest constricts on the words. "How to stop feeling like this. Gods, it hurts." She curls forward against her knees - her body feels like it's going concave, pushing her to give in and just cry like a child over the image of her parents fading away into motes of light, and Lae'zel kneeling next to her to lay a gentle hand on her shoulder isn't helping.
"I find myself wishing to help you." Lae'zel is looking at her with empathy. Understanding. She's that much more compelling this way, without pretense or judgement. "You might be surprised, but…it pains me to see you like this."
Shadowheart kisses her.
Lae'zel reels from it at first, but she catches up quickly. She shifts her position when Shadowheart clambers clumsily into her lap, assists Shadowheart in unbuckling her from her chest harness. But when Shadowheart tries to push things in a harsher direction, to trigger the aggression of their first coupling, Lae'zel doesn't follow. Instead she's careful. Soft.
Shadowheart doesn't know how to handle soft. She's been punished for vulnerability her whole life – gentleness is more terrifying than pain. Pain is easier. Pain is home.
"Fuck me," Shadowheart finally whispers, baring herself completely before Selûne's statue. Giving Lae'zel free reign of her body. "Fuck me like you hate me. Hurt me, Lae'zel."
"You may take of me what you need," Lae'zel says, her fingers maddeningly gentle where they rest on Shadowheart's hips. "But I do not wish to hurt you. Not anymore."
Now, of all times, Lae'zel has grown a conscience.
"Why?" Shadowheart breathes, barely biting back a sob. "I did it for you, I helped you when you – when you –"
"You are not seeking to escape numbness," Lae'zel says, firm even in her softness. "You are trying to achieve it."
"Yes." It's infuriating – Lae'zel understands, and yet she still refuses. She's impervious to anything Shadowheart does to goad her - scratching, biting, pulling Lae'zel's hand to her throat and pressing it there until her head starts to swim. But Lae'zel pulls it away, leaving begging Shadowheart's only recourse. "Please. Please, I need – I need you to hurt me."
"No. I do not think you do."
Shadowheart wrestles with the sobs clawing at her throat. She just wants it all to go away – she wants to forget again. To wipe her slate clean with agony. Chase the emotional away with the physical, erase herself with the punishment she deserves for a lifetime of sin until all that’s left is an empty shell. She wants release, and Lae'zel won't give it to her.
Lae'zel strokes the line of her jaw. Tucks a lock of white hair behind Shadowheart's ear, toying with the long ends of it.
"You gave me pain when I asked," Lae'zel says. Her breath is warm on Shadowheart's lips, but it flays her like a winter wind. "And yet even as you did, I wanted to ask you for…tenderness."
Shadowheart does sob, this time. She convulses. Her whole body shakes in Lae'zel's arms, like the emotion she's holding back is a creature with physical form trying to tear its way out of her chest.
"Let me give you what I was too afraid to have for myself," Lae'zel murmurs.
Their next kiss is intimate. Lae'zel is careful with her, as if she's made of spun glass, and with nothing else left to her Shadowheart lets it happen. She allows soft touches, deep kisses, even as the gentleness seems to hurt more. It hurts in a different way. A deeper way. It hurts deep in the recesses of her being, the parts of her that have always wished for kindness and gotten only abuse in return. It hurts because, despite what she's begged Lae'zel for, she craves this tenderness. She takes it greedily and aches for more.
"Shadowheart," Lae'zel murmurs, sharp teeth scraping at her collarbone without biting down. "You are beautiful."
Hot tears are streaking down Shadowheart's face, and she doesn't bother to wipe them. She lets them fall, streaking her makeup and wetting Lae'zel wherever they touch. Lae'zel doesn't seem to mind.
"Call me – call me Jenevelle," Shadowheart whispers, just as Lae'zel's fingers find her inner thighs. "Just once."
Lae'zel slips inside her.
"Jenevelle."
It feels natural to let their tadpoles connect, now. Lae'zel's mind opens to her, welcoming the intrusion, and it's as if her thoughts parts the storm of Shadowheart's in a well of calm that sweeps through her. Understanding. Empathy. Lae'zel's voice in her head is strong enough to override the tempest.
You have lost all that you believed in. All that you dedicated yourself to. You have lost hope. But there is strength and joy in finding new purpose. You are stronger than you think.
And with that connection thrumming between them, Lae'zel makes love to her.
Lae'zel is unerringly gentle. Consistent and strong, letting Shadowheart ride her hand and take what she needs, but not letting her chase punishment. It's strange and unfamiliar, being together like this without the mutually inflicted pain. But it's better. Lae'zel isn't just strong and coarse, harsh lines and sharp angles – she's soft, too. Her skin is smooth and clean. Her nails are long and pointed, but she carefully keeps them from hurting Shadowheart. Her catlike eyes are luminous, looking up at Shadowheart with something like devotion. Her hair smells sweet with the floral oil she carefully applies to it each night. And her voice is low and gentle, crackling warm like a campfire.
Shadowheart comes not in a wave or a breaking point but in a sigh. A weight lifted. She's still crying, she notes distantly - crying and clinging to Lae'zel like the buoy she's proving to be. But there's no flash of pain from Shar's mark, now just a small scar on the back of her hand. There's no shame or repentance. It feels cleansing. It feels redeeming. A holy union before Selûne.
Lae'zel holds her through it. She holds her until Shadowheart has no more tears to give, and she tolerates Shadowheart snotting up her shoulder without complaint. She doesn't speak until Shadowheart's sobs have faded to hiccups.
"Better?"
Shadowheart sinks into her embrace. She puts all her weight into Lae'zel's arms, and the gith holds her up easily. "Yes."
"Good," Lae'zel breathes. The hard line of her shoulders relaxes.
"You sound relieved," Shadowheart notes. Her eyes are closed, still coasting on the updrafts with Lae'zel's fingers buried inside her, but her other senses seem heightened. She can hear the slight insecurity in Lae'zel's voice.
"I am as unfamiliar with this as you are. I was…unsure."
"Consider it a success."
She can feel Lae'zel smile against her neck.
"Don't think any of this means that I actually like you," Shadowheart says lightly. "Gith."
It has no bite when she's still clinging to Lae'zel, nuzzling into her shoulder and breathing in the comforting smell of her hair. Lae'zel chuckles. Her laugh is a sound Shadowheart has never truly heard before – she didn't know she was capable of it. Laughter and gentleness and care. Her arms tighten protectively around Shadowheart's back.
"I would not dream of it. Zhak vo'n'fynh duj."
The words are said with affection, but Shadowheart frowns. "That phrase is different. Not the source of your bruises anymore?"
"No," Lae'zel says softly. She presses a kiss under the hinge of Shadowheart's jaw. "Source of my joy."
Something new blooms in Shadowheart's chest. It stretches out like a flower in the sun, taking root in all the darkened places that Shar used to occupy. Places that even Selûne can't bring light to. Lae'zel is there, now, with protection and passion and fierce devotion. Mutual obsession. Perhaps even love.
"When this is all over," Lae'zel whispers. "Will you stay with me?"
The fight against the Absolute is nearer than ever. Lae'zel has her oath to her people, and Shadowheart to Selûne. But perhaps together a new purpose can be found. Shadowheart pulls away from the safety of Lae'zel's shoulder, sealing her answer with a kiss.
"I'm not going anywhere."