powerhungry | SALTBURNT

A few days. I thought it was unlike you.

I'm sorry. I was--

Gone. But still here, I think.

[ Shadowheart is disoriented, still, caught in the unreality of being home and then the deepest depths of the Shadowfell, and spit back out--

Here.

And there's a version of this where she asks without giving anything away, where she's cautious or coy, but she doesn't have that in her anymore. ]

I'm going to that place you mentioned before.

I need you there with me.

[ Gone, but still here. Different from his own (purported) experience. Another magic trick to have to endure — at least for those still living. ]

I can meet you there.

[ No question mark — an assumption made that she means now unless she says otherwise. ]

[ She doesn't follow up, knows she doesn't need to. Shadowheart feels as if she's outside her own body as she dresses in leather--not proper armor, largely absent from this place--and slips on the gauntlets, heavy in silver plate with a deep purple gem embedded in the back, a mirror of her wound.

The room finds her, the way they so often do. Silco will find her, too. She's certain of nothing except for this, in the way of a waking dream--where reality clouds at the edges, becomes a rippling mirror.

And the room itself is this dark reflection, of course. The crumbling temple of a goddess who has forsaken her, skittering rats underfoot and cold that seeps from deep underground, as if the Shadowfell were still close at hand. Statues of her Lady--no, hers no longer--stretching taller than the manor's ceilings could allow.

You are nothing. I will leave you with nothing.

The shape of it is cruel. But cruelty is Shar's way, and perhaps it is the way of this labyrinthine place, too.

Shadowheart hears Silco enter before she sees him, with the quiet click of an impossible door. She doesn't turn to look: just flexes her fingers in the gauntlets before curling them into fists, something dark swirling at the center of each gem as power courses up her arms, into her palms. ]

You might wish to stand back.

[ It's the only warning she gives before she slams a fist into the ground at her feet with a sickening crack, faded mosaics of Dark Justiciars splintering, becoming fragments of themselves in an instant. Shadowheart strikes again, until the tiles crumble to dust, and a fissure winds its way to the base of a statue of Shar.

Shadowheart feels nothing in her body but force and impulse. Wonders if this is what Karlach feels, when she gives over to her rages, as she swings at the statue with all the power within her, a sound pulled from her lungs that she barely hears. ]

[ It's a small blessing, Silco supposes, that this kind of power isn't entirely alien to him. It doesn't keep him from flinching when she throws her first punch, when the very ground beneath them shudders from the impact, but he doesn't feel the urge to shout or run from the room.

Stone shatters like porcelain, each thunderous strike turning mosaics and statues of faces he can't identify into rubble. Granted, he can guess, based on what she's shared with him — the goddess to whom she'd pledged her devotion, suddenly no longer the subject of adoration. All such loyalty — unreciprocated as it is — ends this way. At least, perhaps, she'll have the strength to fight her way through that revelation.

But he doesn't speak the thought aloud, instead letting his gaze travel from the destruction to Shadowheart's figure, the twist of her features as she howls at a pitch that makes him think she could do without the gauntlets, if she truly wished it. He's not here to stop her, not even just to watch — she invokes need, and he can already see the faint outline of a picture taking shape.

A need for solid ground, a need for something more tangible than the love of a god. ]

[ Even if this place is nothing more than a facade, Shadowheart knows Shar must be watching. She feels it in the hollow where Shar's gifts should be, her wound searing-cold through each thrown punch, absence as presence, worse now than it ever was when she longed for her blessing.

Shame will come later. Shadowheart's been careful with Silco, even in her flashes of sharing truth with him, and this borders on reckless. The sort of righteous grief she imagines Dame Aylin must hold within her, that they'll meet at Moonrise soon enough.

But there is no Moonrise here. No Ketheric Thorm, no Cult of the Absolute, no purpose to throw herself into now that she's forsaken the one compass she's known and devoted her entire life to. All she has is this place outside of time that toys with them all, splinters their pasts and their futures, where even death isn't a mercy.

Her goddess's mask, black marble veined with gold, turns to pulp in Shadowheart's hands. There are streaks of blood on her temple and cheeks, dust and shards of rock in her hair as the ruins fall to pieces and something like an ordinary room coalesces behind them.

It swims in Shadowheart's vision, as she staggers to her knees. The gauntlets release, clatter to the floor; her knuckles are bleeding freely, and her body crumples, the world fading out. ]

[ Her body never hits the ground.

In comparison to the other guests here, he's nothing special — no magic, no enhanced abilities, no immortality — but as mortal men go, he's capable enough. (More than, others might say, when he has the vicious strength to break bone underfoot.) That is to say, he catches her, arms looped under hers, brow creasing for a split second as he surveys the scene around them. Of course, he thinks. Of course such a power comes with a catch.

Step by careful step, he lowers her down, maneuvering her shoulders into the circle of his arms, her head on his chest as he manages to sit. As her thoughts fade, his spin, wondering if he ought to carry her to the clinic, if he ought to bind her hands sooner rather than later — but never once if he ought to simply leave her prone on the floor.

Suddenly, clearly (gently): ]

Shadowheart.

[ He waits, watching her delicate features for any sign of returning consciousness. He can't forget that she's the one who'd called him here. Wanted him here, even while shattering the mask she'd put on for him before. ]

You're alright.

[ The pain in her wound pulls her hazily back to consciousness, her name distant until sound rushes in. Shadowheart is dead weight in Silco's arms, terrified for a moment that she's lost use of her limbs--but it's just unnatural exhaustion that leaves her heavy, the way the gauntlets made her weightless. She'd only barely tested them, before; now she knows the cost.

And she wonders if Silco will think her useless for it. Why had she asked him here? Astarion and Gale both know more of her--know the stakes of the Gauntlet, of Nightsong. They know what happens next in their own timelines. They would understand, could even offer real comfort.

But she'd chosen a different witness. There's no abandonment that will matter the way Shar's matters; she'll be hunted by the scarce few people she remembers, whenever she returns home. Whatever she's invested in Silco, there's nothing truly left for her to lose.

Shadowheart looks up at him for the first time since inviting him here, the light low in her eyes. Her wounded hand forms a loose cuff around his wrist, as she tries to sit up. ]

Don't take me to my room.

[ Her voice sounds strange to her own ears, as she presses her cheek against his chest, closes her eyes. He doesn't smell familiar to her, because there are so few things that are, but he smells like Silco. Like a body, warm. His heartbeat close to her temple, so very human, not shadow and loss given form. ]

Anywhere else. [ She's not in any state to be making demands, curled into him as she is. But nothing matters, and so she does, her lashes wet against the fabric of his shirt. ]

You should punish me for being gone.

[ Of all the lieutenants and foot soldiers who've cycled through his service, not a one would ever imagine touching him like this, let alone that he might stay once they proved themselves expended. But not a one of them are here, either. Here, there's her, standing behind an open door and ushering him in. ]

Is that what you want? To be punished?

[ His long fingers ghost over her forehead, brushing back her bangs, clearing her face in an idle motion meant for no other purpose than to soothe. (He has softness in him. Stamped out and then carefully coaxed back to life by a blue spark, visible in hours spent learning to braid hair, to tie ribbons and woven bracelets around tiny wrists. He knows the shape of it, how to give it without the trappings from which they'd been born.) ]

Haven't you done that to yourself already?

[ She's still limp when he moves to pick her up, gathering her gauntlets in the bend of her lap before lifting her from the floor. Not to her room, no to his, but not here. He thinks of the boudoir, but that's not quite right.

He settles, in the next beat, on the planetarium.

Softly: ] Hold onto me.

[ A Sharran wouldn't imagine touching him like this, either. All weakness and sentiment, self-pity. Not even children are allowed such follies, in the Cloister.

But Shadowheart's forsaken; nothing's expected of her, anymore. And for now, Silco isn't turning her away.

She doesn't answer his question, at first, just slips an arm around him for support as he picks her up, her knuckles stinging. She wonders if her father ever did this for her--if there are childhood memories locked away somewhere that she'll never get back, ones where she was carried to bed, where she might have skinned her knees and gotten scooped up before starting to cry.

Shadowheart is so tired. She pulls Silco's question back to her, as they move through the halls, one sure thing in a sea of uncertainty. ]

That wasn't punishment. [ Though she is injured, now, in a way she hadn't anticipated. She curls her fingers toward her palm, wound throbbing. ] That was for me.

[ He doesn't answer her straight away. For a stretch, there's just silence — or rather, the sound of his footsteps, heavier than they usually are, taking them both down the hall.

The light in the planetarium is a dreamy purple when he carries her inside, nudging the door open with his shoulder and letting it fall closed behind him as he moves them toward one of the two-seaters. The pale hue of the fabric changes with the shifting of the false sky, the shifting of the painted stars and planets. It's plush, soft, giving way without protest under Shadowheart's weight. As good a temporary reprieve as any other place in the manor. His hands only leave her once he's certain she's settled. ]

If it's what you really want—

[ And he's not certain it is, not really. But that's not what he says, and it's the sound of tearing fabric that fills the room, first. A ribbon of fabric ripping free of his shirt, long enough to bind around her opened knuckles. ]

—ask me for it again.

[ It's not the soft balm of healing magic, but there's something in the simplicity of this--Silco winding fabric around broken skin, her knuckles raw and stinging--that feels right to Shadowheart, somehow. To be so in her body, to feel the hurt of it rather than whatever numbness took her through the depths of the Shadowfell.

Under any other circumstances, their positions would be reversed. She's offered her magic to him, hasn't she? Her strength, fleeting it seems; her time and effort at Hex Club. Still, none of those things truly cost her anything. She could have kept Silco at a distance, before tonight.

It's a threshold crossed, but there are others still. Too tender to ask him to stay with her here, while she rests, without some other form of transaction. Shame edges into her body through her fever-flush and her bloodied hands, the skin that will knit itself back together and the one dark wound that might not ever heal.

There's a night sky wheeling overhead, still unfamiliar to her. Shadowheart turns onto her side, cheek against a soft pillow, to look at Silco rather than the stars, catch his wrist again before he can pull away.

What does she want? To understand, when Shar has always left her in the dark. To see the path forward. To remember.

She can't ask for any of these things. ]

Punish me.

[ Her eyes are rimmed dark with smeared shadow, holding Silco's gaze until she brings his hand to her lips, brushing them over his knuckles with a soft scrape of teeth. ]

Please.

SALTBURNT | inbox.

no subject

1/2

no subject

no subject

➡️ 🎬

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject