Chapter Text
When Tav had accepted his invitation, Astarion had been a bit surprised. After all, he’d really only made it thinking she’d refuse it, but considering she’d not only accepted but also turned down Lae’zel’s advances to keep it . . .
Perhaps his previous seduction had worked after all. When she’d challenged him, asking for a round two, he was sure she’d seen through him. She was hard to read; sometimes he thought he had her nailed down, and then she’d do something that completely confounded him and he’d start the whole process over.
He hadn’t seen her for a while at the party, but she’d been flitting around from person to person, and it had been hard to keep track of her. Besides, he’d gotten to learn their reticent Shadowheart was not only a loud drunk, but also a happy one after she’d thrown an arm around his shoulders and offered him a glass, and then when he pointed out he had his own bottle, had taken a drink without a second thought. She’d even paused for a moment, went, “I think we just kissed indirectly!” and left to converse with Karlach without even pausing to process it.
He slunk away from the camp, easy to do with the heavy shadows and the merriment going on, walking in the direction of the small clearing they’d agreed on. To his surprise, she was already there, a threadbare blanket laid down on the ground under her as she sat on the righthand side of it. A bottle of wine and two empty glasses were perched next to her on the ground. Perhaps more concerning was the large, live boar that was sitting down in front of her, off the blanket, seemingly obediently waiting for something.
“Is this where I find out you have some interesting kinks?” he asked, a little worried about what she was planning.
She beamed at him, and then laughed as his words hit. “No, not at all.” She waved at the boar with an open hand. “I figured everyone else was doing some indulging tonight, it was only fair that you should get to as well. It’s actually quite excited to have you drink its blood.”
His brain stopped as he puzzled through that statement. “Are you saying you charmed a boar?”
“It’s a secret.” She winked, clearly pleased with herself and maybe a little tipsy from previous merrymaking. There was a rosy flush high in her cheeks. “Still, I wasn’t sure if it made a difference whether the thing was alive or dead before you drank from it, and I brought you a glass if you can figure out how to get the blood into it . . . but also I figured it would be a lot cleaner if you did it, not me.” She picked up one of the wine glasses, holding it out to him.
He eyed it—and her—suspiciously, his gaze going back and forth between them. “What is going on here?” he finally asked.
She wilted, the hand with the glass dropping back to the blanket. Her expression twisted into something that almost resembled regret, although what she would have to regret, he wasn’t sure. “You keep looking at me like I’m about to shapeshift into some monster . . . which I guess I am, but we both are. I’m not entirely sure what has made you so afraid of me, but to compensate, I’m offering you blackmail. On me,” she clarified.
She was saying words, but his brain was failing to understand them. “You’re . . . what?”
“I’ll tell you anything about me that you want to know. Just a warning, there’s not much to tell in most places, but if it’ll make you feel more comfortable, it’ll be worth it.”
“But . . . why?” He would have had to be tortured to open up in the way she was offering, and while yes, she could lie to him, there would be very little reason to set this whole thing up to give him some falsehoods she could have given to their entire camp.
She looked down at her knees, and he thought for a moment she was going to refuse to answer. Still, when he had almost decided to walk away, she sighed. “Because I know you didn’t want to sleep with me. I have no idea what your reasons were, and I don’t really need to know them if you don’t want to share. But . . . I should have stopped you when I figured it out and I didn’t. So, I’m sorry.”
He stared at her, wondering if she was about to grow a second head too. That would have made just about as much sense. Maybe he was just dreaming. “You’re apologizing for—give me a second.” He tried to sort it out in his head. “Me seducing you, and then you being worried I didn’t enjoy it?”
“I mean, you didn’t.” She shrugged, unrepentant in her blunt statement. “More that you didn’t get what you were looking for out of that. Again, whatever it was.”
He stared at her, trying to figure her out. After a moment, he demanded, “use the tadpole.”
“Huh?”
“I—I want to know what you’re thinking.”
She opened up the connection, and he could feel it: the growing discomfort during their interaction, the concern, the flashes of red eyes that he figured out almost too late were his own, dark like vast seas of emptiness. The guilt beginning to settle in. The feeling of intrusion as they talked about the scars on his back. Just a general sense of disquiet about the whole thing.
She terminated the connection, her expression unreadable. “Remember it’s not a one-way thing,” she reminded him, and he wondered what she’d seen in his own memory. Whatever it was, she didn’t seem angry. She just stared at him as if patiently waiting for him to make his decision.
As far as he could tell, she was serious about the whole thing. And if he knew more about her, he could use that against her in the future if he needed to. He weighed his options before he nodded. “Alright then.”
He took the glass when she offered it again and waved at the boar, her own hand moving to screw open the top of the bottle of wine.
“You may want to look away. It’s not particularly pretty,” he warned her.
She co*cked an eyebrow. “I’ve seen you feed on me; how much worse can it be?”
“Yes, well, you aren’t covered in wiry hair, are you?”
She shrugged, seemingly satisfied with his answer and turning her head to the side as if to give him some privacy.
As promised, the boar stayed very still as he ripped through its skin with his teeth. Though the taste was still nothing in comparison to the blood of the woman in front of him, it wasn’t bad, and it was significantly larger than her as well. He didn’t have to worry about killing it; it had accepted its death. He wouldn’t be receiving dirty looks from the rest of their companions in the morning, or threats of bodily harm.
He took a long drag, then allowed some of the blood to pour from the wound into the chalice she’d offered. It was too viscous to be mistaken as wine, too richly colored, but he could appreciate the sense of normalcy it created. For someone whose dinner was usually woodland animals these days, the experience left a lot to be desired.
He made sure to turn the boar so that the blood wouldn’t seep into the blanket she’d laid down, and then sat down in the empty space to her left, his own cup in hand. “Bon appetit,” he said, toasting her.
She raised her own glass, but didn’t go as far as clinking them against each other, which he could understand; he hadn’t managed to get all of it in the cup, and he figured she didn’t need an extra taste to her drink. The bottle next to her was the cheap, awful stuff: Starburst Shanty. Even the lower city citizens turned up their nose at that stuff, at least for the first bottle. Her tastes, from what he knew of her so far, were humble; she was uncomfortable at anything expensive or luxurious unless she was selling it, and then she would take a vendor for all of their money.
“So, what do you want to know?” she asked.
There was a simple place to start, one he knew he wanted answered before anything else. “What happened with the Loviatar worshipper?” he asked.
He had expected she might flinch or try to get out of it, but she just took a healthy swig of wine and sighed. “When I was a kid, there was a rough year. There wasn’t enough food to feed everyone thanks to the storms that kept ripping through the island, and it just destroyed all the crops. Everyone was desperate. We’d just had a unit in class on sacrifices, and so it seemed logical at the time to sacrifice someone to a god—to be clear, we were children, so I do mean any god—to try to fix things.” She paused, and he wondered where she was going with this. “That sacrifice ended up being me.”
Her words sounded rehearsed, and he supposed she could have guessed he might ask about it. Still, he looked intently into her expression to try to tell if she was lying. She met his gaze straight on, body language stiff but open. Even when she lied, though, it was hard to tell. He’d been in total agreement with her for moments that he knew were contradictory before realizing he’d literally seen the opposite happen. Was this the truth? He didn’t know. “You seem to be still alive.”
“During the whole process, there was a raid on the village. They’re not abnormal; if it’s not drow from the Underdark, it’s other villages—if one of us is starving, all of us are starving, after all—or even wannabe conquerors from the mainland. It’s just a fact of life over there. But this time, it got timed just right.” She hiked her knees up into her chest, wrapping her arms around them. “I didn’t want to be a sacrifice. I didn’t think it was fair, just because I was half-drow, but I was small and weak and a couple of the older kids overpowered me. They tied me up, and I kept listening to them talk about how it was supposed to be done, looking at their textbooks and arguing with each other and I hated them. Every single one of them. I wished they all would drop dead.
“Whenever there was a raid, someone would ring the bell in the middle of the town, and that was your cue to hide, or go home. They’d set all of this up in an open barn; there was no place to hide. And they all left me there. Tied up, in an unlocked barn.” He could recognize the anger and deep-seated bitterness on her face. It looked odd on her normally neutral expression. He’d seen panic and fear, but anger was new, especially one this deep, this rich. The fibers of her being had been affected by this event, she’d been changed, marred, forever transformed. “I don’t know why the raiders didn’t look in the barn that day, because I would have been easy prey. I would have died, or been sold, or something else equally awful. But they didn’t go in. And I was left there to listen for the silence. And when it got quiet, I shouted for someone to free me, but no one ever came. I eventually got free of my own accord, and when I left the barn, the entire village was destroyed. Burned to ash. The only thing left standing was that barn.”
“So you thought it was a god,” he said, trying to put the pieces together.
“At first, no. It didn’t make sense; after all, no one had been sacrificed. But the more I thought about it, and tried to deal with the fact that I had no one and nowhere to go back to . . . the more I began to wonder. I was still pretty young, so some merchants helped me get to another village, and their orphanage was part of a monastery to the Okidaito goddess of creation, and I just heard it over and over. I’d been blessed by the goddess, to help me survive.” She shook her head adamantly. “But I had wanted every single one of them dead. If that was true, I had been the one to cause the raid that day. I was the entire reason they were all dead. And I . . . I thought about how irresponsible it was, if she had blessed me, to bless a young child with that kind of power.”
“It’s a useful one at least,” he said.
She glared at him. “That’s your takeaway?” she asked, sounding annoyed. “It was all a coincidence; I’m not blessed with anything other than some luck in some odd situations. If I was blessed by a goddess, do you think I’d be sitting here with a tadpole in my eye?”
“But you have the artifact that protects you, and likes you.”
“And we don’t know why. I can’t imagine it’s some divine purpose though.”
He wouldn’t know; the gods had forsaken him a long time ago. “But the Absolute likes you,” he said.
“The Absolute is putting tadpoles in people’s eyes to control them; maybe I’m just predisposed to being a mindflayer. Or maybe the Absolute likes all of us and I’m just the one who keeps speaking up.”
“Well, if that’s the truth, I’d rather not find out,” he said, repulsed. “It doesn’t seem to be benefiting you.”
“Oh, it’s not,” she agreed wholeheartedly. She gave a nervous laugh, and stretched back out on the blanket. “I couldn’t tell you why it likes me, or why anything likes me, or why I survived that day; it just all happened. I’m sure there’s some explanation for it, but I’ve just been on the peripheral of other people’s stories, so I’ve never found out the reason why.”
“So when the Loviatar worshipper said you had already been touched by another goddess,” he said slowly, putting the pieces together.
She nodded. “That’s what I thought of, and I just . . . freaked out. I thought he could see something.”
“How are you so sure he didn’t?”
She tapped her temple. “The dream guardian talks to me sometimes. She . . . helped me figure it out. She thinks it was talking about the Absolute. Besides, think about the other things we’ve experienced. It’s not like I’ve had stellar luck so far. I fell over a banister and almost burned to death in Waukeen’s Rest. I would have been toast earlier with Minthara if you hadn’t been there. Sure, maybe there’s some divine power keeping me alive, but did you feel like you were doing it because some higher power commanded you to?”
He paused, considering that. Obviously, he’d been concerned—she was his link to the artifact; if she died, that was all going to be a mess—but he’d protected her on his own terms. He’d even contemplated for just a moment letting her die and taking the artifact from her dead body before anyone else could get to it, but had discarded the thought. “No,” he agreed.
She raised a hand. “And there you have it.” She took another drink of wine. “I can’t say the thought doesn’t still scare me though. What if I’m wrong?”
“Then you have a god on your side,” he said. “What’s the point in looking back now? You’re as far from your islands as possible. What are you afraid is going to be chasing you here?”
Her eyebrows furrowed, as if she’d never considered that. Her head tilted to the right, and then to the left, and then back to the right, as if she was debating the merits with herself. “I suppose you’re right,” she said after a moment.
There was a part of him that felt hollow then, because even as he was telling her this, he himself was still beholden to his past. He’d had nightmares of what might happen once Cazador found him. Sure, he talked about never going back, but was he actually strong enough to do so? Cunning enough to avoid everything Cazador would throw at him to get him back? The longer he was gone, the more it weighed on his mind. Cazador would be furious. Maybe this time he’d lock him up for a decade or punish him over and over again until he begged for death and then punish him more.
The thought sent a shiver down his spine. She’d caught it too; he’d seen the little flicker of recognition in her eye. He hated how perceptive she seemed to be; the fact that he’d kept his vampire status secret for as long as he had was a miracle. “So, you’re possibly touched by a god. What else?” he asked, changing the subject.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you clearly had rehearsed that one, so you knew I would ask about it. Any more that you had on the docket?”
She flinched, and he knew he was right. Sure, he might have been predictable, but she’d expected to share that one as soon as she’d offered it, and the risk was low. She’d even done her part to downplay the severity of it, assuming the god in question was real. She’d known what the narrative around it would be before their conversation had even begun.
She seemed to fight with herself for a moment before letting out a deep breath. “What other questions do you have?”
He was a bit surprised she’d handed it back to him. Was she hoping he wouldn’t know what else to ask? “Is everything you’ve told us so far true?” he asked.
She nodded. “I’m a bard from Okidaito.” Then she paused, and an irritated expression crossed her face. “But . . . my name isn’t Tav.”
“Oh?” he asked, leaning forward in interest. “Then what is it?”
“Well, if I knew, don’t you think I’d go by it?”
Her tone was only a mild warning; he soldiered on regardless. “What do you mean, you don’t know what it is?”
She was trying not to shut down completely; he could tell by the way she’d stiffened. Her eyes were darting around as if she were looking for an escape route, but she stayed seated. “I don’t know what it is,” she admitted after a moment. Her arms wrapped around her legs as if she were trying to make herself as small as possible. “Everyone who would have known is dead, and . . . I was too scared to use a Speak with Dead spell. I even had the scroll. I just kept asking myself if it would really matter, but . . . I was just too afraid to find out.”
“You did mention an orphanage earlier,” he said. “I’m curious; you mentioned raids from the Underdark. Do drow live on the surface on the Islands too?”
She shook her head. “There’s only a few of us that are mixed because of it. Usually it’s more of a . . . non-consensual kind of situation. There’s only so many resources, and anyone who is different just inherently causes issues. The people on the surface want the drow to stay in the Underdark, and the drow want the freedom to explore freely. When they butt heads, it . . . well, causes a lot of bad things to happen.”
“And you?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Same kind of thing,” she said, seeming more comfortable with this line of questioning. “From what I gather, the drow tried to raid the village, the villagers fought them off and took one hostage . . . and tried to play house. A few months after I was born, she regained her strength and burned down the entire village.”
“That seems like a risky thing for anyone to do,” he said, thinking about what he’d heard of just Menzoberranzan drow.
“There’s always people who think they know better,” she said with a shrug.
“So, where’s ‘Tav’ from? Just some sort of nickname?” he asked.
For a second, he thought she was going to close up again, but instead, she started laughing. “It’s what they called me at the first orphanage. They found me in the rubble in Tori Akagi Village, so . . . T-A-V. Tav.”
He sat upright, almost insulted for her. “That’s it? They never bothered with anything else?”
For some reason, that made her laugh harder. “It’s so pathetic, isn’t it?” she asked. She laid on her back, still giggling to herself.
“Then why not give yourself a new one?” he asked when he had recovered.
It had taken long enough that she’d calmed a bit; she was still lying down, eyes fixed on the sky above them. At that question, she closed her eyes, and then seemingly came to some decision, because she rolled onto her side to face him. “You’re going to think this is stupid, but you have to promise not to laugh, okay?”
He nodded his assent, figuring she wouldn’t tell him unless he did.
“It’s just . . . a name is a gift, you know? It’s one of the only gifts everyone gets; someone has cared for you enough to give you a name that they like! Even if it’s empty and it doesn’t mean something, it’s the giving it that means something. And I . . .” She got quiet, her gaze dropping. “I want that too, someday. Someone who cares about me enough that they would care about what I was called. I don’t think I’ll ever find that.”
How . . . disgustingly sentimental, he thought. She seemed embarrassed about it too.
“Honestly though, until recently, I’ve been asked about my name so few times that it isn’t usually on my mind,” she said suddenly, as quickly as she could seem to get the words out. She sat up, her posture closing back off as she hiked her knees to her chest again. “No one really cares who I am when I’m performing; I could tell them anything and as long as I play music for them, they’ll have forgotten it by the end of the night anyways.” Maybe she wasn’t closing herself off; her gaze was centered on the blanket, soft and wistful for just a moment. “It’s almost . . . reassuring sometimes.”
“Reassuring?” he asked.
She paused, as if she wasn’t ready for him to ask that question, and then picked up her wine glass and drained it of the remaining liquid inside. “Someday, I will die, and it will be like I never existed. There won’t be anyone who will remember me clearly or fondly, so there’s no one to be sad over it. My memory will just . . . disappear.”
He stared at her. “And that’s a good thing?”
She shrugged. In that single movement, he could see the price that her freedom had exacted upon her. The decades of loneliness, of isolation, of solitude that had convinced her that she was unimportant to the world were clear in the slope of her shoulders and the tormented look on her face. It lasted only a breath though. “At least no one will suffer,” she said without missing a beat.
He scoffed. “That’s ridiculous. Completely and utterly mad. Do you think the tieflings here will ever forget you? They think you’re a hero. They think we’re heroes, crazy as the idea is.”
Her head tilted, and finally, a pensive look crossed her expression. “Eventually, probably. Memory does fade. But . . .” Her lips pursed together, and she ran her thumb along the curve of her glass. “Perhaps . . . perhaps they’ll remember for a while.” She lifted her gaze, staring at him now. “You’ll be remembered though. If we make it out of here and get these tadpoles out of our heads, I expect the bards will be writing songs about you.”
“Me?” he asked, surprised.
She smiled, a little mischief in it. “You do make yourself known in every room.” She turned away to grab the bottle of wine behind her, filling her glass up for the third time. “But really, I think you’re going to do great things.”
He felt as if he’d been punched, his mouth suddenly going dry. “What nonsense,” he muttered, covering up his embarrassment with a drink from his own glass. “I’m killing Cazador, and then after that, it’s a life of luxury for me. After the whole tadpole business, of course.”
“A life of luxury, hm?” She leaned back. Her cheeks were even more flushed now; from what he could see of the bottle, she’d polished off the majority of it. “I can see that. All of those fancy things. Jewelry, fine clothing . . . gold on everything.” There was a little furrow of her eyebrows and wrinkle of her nose that made her opinion of that clear.
“And what’s your grand plan?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Going back to traveling, I guess. I haven’t thought that far ahead, to be honest. Maybe one of our companions might need some assistance, but other than that, I don’t have much of a plan. This is all kind of a one-day-at-a-time situation. I mean, two days ago, I would have never imagined we would have saved the grove.”
He raised his glass in agreement to that.
“Okay, I know this is my question-and-answer time, but can I ask something?” She leaned forward eagerly, and he waved a hand to get her to go on. “If you were to drink my blood right now, would it have the taste of wine?”
The change of topic was so swift that it almost gave him whiplash. “I . . . don’t know,” he admitted. “Why, is that an invitation? Did being bitten unlock something in you?” he teased, not entirely out of humor.
“No!” she was quick to say. “I was just curious!”
He wasn’t done with her though; not the way her face was reddening and the easy banter they’d fallen into. “You know there’s nothing stopping me from feasting on you again, right? We both know you couldn’t fight me off even if you wanted to.” He never would, of course; he’d promised just on the people they were already going to kill, and he wasn’t stupid. He’d only stayed after almost killing her because of her good graces. Violating that trust would be a one-way trip to a solo expedition.
“Nothing stopping you but you,” she said.
She seemed so sure he wouldn’t; how foolish of her to trust him. To test the waters even further, he put his cup down, leaning forward into her space until he was close enough to her neck to feel the heat radiating off of it. She hadn’t moved, and although her breath had quickened and he could see her pulse begin to pound, he couldn’t tell if that was out of a sense of danger or just his proximity. She wouldn’t stop him if he dug his fangs in and drank, and it gave him a lightheaded feeling of power. Just out of curiosity, he touched his lips ever so gently against where he’d drank from her before. The marks from his teeth were gone now, but they’d lasted days, and every time he’d seen them he’d felt a thrill deep in his belly.
Aside from her heartbeat thrumming like a hummingbird’s wings, she didn’t do anything. Didn’t pull away, didn’t recoil, just stayed very still.
For some reason, as he pulled away, he felt like he’d lost. She was watching him with a knowing smirk.
“Has anyone ever told you that you trust too easily?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Not often, but there’s a first time for everything.” She suddenly sighed, the triumphant expression disappearing. “I wanted to talk to you about that anyways.”
“Trust?”
“No, the blood drinking.” She waved her hand at his answer. “Look, you’d almost killed me last time you asked, so I might have been a bit . . . less generous when I told you that you couldn’t drink from me again. In reality, right now we have plenty of little animals around for you to get your fill of, but if that ever changes . . . you can ask me, if you need.”
“You’re giving me permission to drink your blood again?” he asked in utter disbelief. Perhaps the wine really had gone to her head.
“Only if you ask!” She raised a finger in warning. “And if you almost kill me again, I’m pretty sure Lae’zel made me promise she’d get to do the punch next time, so good luck surviving that one. But whatever we’re about to head into sounds like it may be a less pleasant area, so the options may become a lot more limited.”
“And that’s your concern? How I’m going to eat?”
She shrugged. “One of them, of course. I’ve skipped a few meals in my lifetime; it’s not fun. I don’t know how little you can live off of, but hopefully we don’t have to find out.”
He’d lived for a year without sustenance, but that was a tale best saved for another time. Her generosity was boundless; she was always offering things, at least to the members of their party. Was it the hope that they would owe her a favor then? Building trust? “I see . . . thank you. That’s . . . quite kind of you.”
“Depending on how things go, maybe you can answer my wine question,” she said, brightening up again.
He couldn’t help but laugh. Somehow the feeling of danger he’d felt at the beginning had subsided; he felt almost comfortable now. He refilled his glass, the blood darker and more viscous now, and lounged back on the blanket. There was a warm feeling in the pit of his stomach, which he partially attributed to the large meal. “So, why go through all this trouble?” he asked, unable to keep himself from kicking the proverbial hornet’s nest. “Obviously I heard Lae’zel offer you a night of . . . well, I’m sure passion would have been a component, if you count bruises and a lot of biting, I would guess. Is that what you’re waiting for here?” he asked.
Her eyes widened like he’d surprised her, despite the fact that had been the original plan when he’d proposed it. “Not if you don’t want to. I’m open to it, in theory; consider it an open invitation. But only if you want to do it. Where this night goes . . . it’s up to us. We’ve had so few moments of freedom since this all started.” She stared up at the sky again, her smile peaceful. “I don’t want you to have to do anything you don’t want to do ever again. At least, not if I can help it.”
“I . . . don’t want to.” He surprised himself with his honesty, but the words were tumbling out before he could stop them. “I might not want to ever.”
The reward for his candidness was a warm, gentle look. Her lips were barely curled into what might have been the hint of a smile, but it was her eyes that carried it. He really couldn’t remember the last time someone had looked at him like that, without lust or contempt or even consideration. It was probably before Cazador sometime, but even before that, he’d not been particularly beloved. He’d been a tool, passionate about only power, and his associates had been similar. “Then it’s off the table,” she declared with a nod.
“And you’re okay with that?”
“Of course.” The way she said it made it sound like it really wasn’t a big deal, and he studied her face to see if there was any sign she was lying. He couldn’t see any. As always, she was too perceptive to miss the scrutinizing look he was fixing her with. “Look, the only way I’d enjoy it is if you enjoyed it. There’s no reason to put us both through something we don’t want. Honestly, if I had my way . . .” she trailed off suddenly, and he could see her retreat into herself again.
“If you had your way?” he prompted, curious.
She fiddled with her fingers. “We could be friends,” she said after a minute. “I don’t know; you seem like you haven’t had a friend in probably a long time, and I . . . I could use someone to trust.”
He kept underestimating her. Was she manipulating him again? At least a bottle of wine in, with still no tells? He hadn’t seen any indicators she was lying yet, and if she’d been telling the truth the entire night . . . perhaps there was a reality they could benefit each other. Two people facing the dawn alone, with nothing to lose except everything. No one would miss him if the vampire spawn Astarion died tonight, except for maybe Cazador.
And, he wondered, possibly her.
“A friend, huh?” The word rolled around in his mouth, but he found he didn’t hate it. In fact, if friendship looked more like tonight, with a full belly and a conversation partner who cared, he found himself wishing for more. He’d been drinking blood the whole time but he’d never really felt as normal as he did right now. “It . . . has been a long time.”
“You don’t have to answer right away,” she said. “It’s fine if you want to think about it some more.”
“I’ll think about it,” he promised. It could be a mutually beneficial relationship, if nothing else.
She shot him a smile and then laid back down on her back, both of them looking up towards the faint lights of the stars in the sky. The silence felt strangely comfortable, even with the sounds of merriment in the distance. “I should have grabbed pillows,” she said after several minutes had gone by, her voice heavy with sleep.
“Are you going to fall asleep here?”
“Do you think you’ll sleep with thirty tieflings at our camp tonight?” she asked.
He supposed she had a point. She was a light sleeper; there had been nights he’d kept watch that she’d woken up at the slightest sound until Scratch had started sleeping next to her, as if he’d realized that she needed some extra reassurance to rest. Even a dog wouldn’t keep her from tossing and turning all night.
“You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to,” she said, turning her head towards him. She stifled a yawn with her hand. “Remember, don’t want you to do things you don’t want to do and all.”
“Fewer people to snore here,” he decided. Besides, leaving her on her own, drunk, in the middle of the woods, seemed like a really good way to somehow lose her to a bear or something.
She hummed her response, curling up on her side as if to get comfortable to sleep. It didn’t seem like it took her long to doze off, likely lulled by the wine and how long the day had been. They’d woken up together and now they were falling asleep together again, albeit in more pleasant circ*mstances. He laid down, careful to keep some space between them. Even so, the blanket wasn’t large; he probably could have spanned the space between him with his hand, and it felt both claustrophobic and comforting at the same time. Perhaps they could be friends, if either of them knew what being a friend was like. He considered the thought, and discarded it for later. He was full and safe and . . . well, liked, he hoped. Because for all of her perceptiveness and the fact he couldn’t seem to keep anything secret from her, he . . . he wasn’t sure how to articulate it, but he would be okay traveling with her. He might even enjoy it at times, he thought.
Perhaps that was what friendship was: a general willingness to overlook the mildly irritating parts of each other in favor of staying together.
