blueprints_bloodstains | Toppling from Cauldron to Blaze

Toppling from Cauldron to Blaze

Orin's stone has been obtained.

Enver Gortash is just coming into the floor of his office when the voice touches his mind. Familiar, though heavier. Closer. Like breath he can feel on the back of his neck.

Anticipation. He feels it himself, the sudden rush and thrill of the dawning thought that there were no steps but the last at this point. Soon the Dark Urge and the rest of the rogue True Souls would return and they would journey to the Underground to finish this. The Elder Brain would at least be back under heel.

The Absolute Plot, at last, would move confidently forward.

His men from the temple stand at the ready for orders. Better to get them posted in the city, just as soon as it was certain it was time.

There is no remaining trace of Bhaal's living flesh.

The Archduke halts mid-step.

Bane does not speak needlessly or without thought. His Chosen knows to heed his words and their clear intent.

Hear me. This changes nothing. The plan continues with or without Myrkul and Bhaal's hands to help guide it.

And he feels something like a hand closing around his mind. Not enough to hurt, but a clear sign it could. A warning reminder.

He responds immediately, with no waver in his voice because that is what that silent command requires. "This changes nothing." The Dark Urge is dead. And he feels the band around his chest tighten. He draws in a resolute breath. Because he will take in air. He will not show what presence in his mind and in the very air around him does not want to see. "The plan continues."

He was always going to be gone. Cruel to have deluded himself into thinking otherwise.

Feel that, and be done. There is more to do, imminently.

The disciples go about their duties at his back as he continues to cross the chamber. He doesn't notice when they actually fall. Neither of them do.

When they bring the stones, take them or bring the rogues along. It is time to assume your rightful place.

And that voice bleeds into every tendril of sensation, washing over those places that hurt like something caustic, refusing to soothe but unwilling to be what is chased away. Bane feels more present, like a firm hand on his shoulder. A presence in the doorway of his mind.

Prepared to see the end.

Reminding him, perhaps, that he rules alone today. As he should. But he never was, truly.

Footsteps bring him toward the back of the chamber. Some of the traps arm themselves.

He doesn't notice them immediately switch off.

The Black Hand is telling Enver now, because what would have happened if those people came to him and he knew only then that the battle with Orin had cut their numbers down? Rude. An attempt to compromise him. But he is prepared.

Feel what you must now. Then never again. You promised yourself this once already.

He doesn't realize until it's too late that the person he senses nearing him is not, in fact, one of his footmen.

Black. The feeling of fingers that were bearing down bleedingly hard, pried away.

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There is no greater agony than grief, and it is one that Baneites are not permitted to afford themselves -- never should they become attached to anyone or anything, beyond themselves, that the loss of it could do so much harm to them. Enver Gortash had been committing a grave sin to allow such a thing to dig its claws in and never completely excise it.

And if the Plot had continued forward as it had been envisioned, especially with him standing alone at the end of it (worse still, if Orin and Ketheric were both still there), this weight would have found no release, following him for eternity, burrowing in the pit of him until they both festered.

So even if there is fear of being seen in a way that is ghastly to what he used to be and in some ways still is despite himself, even if the pain is vibrant and real, it is a comfort to let go of it and hold onto this at long last, to feel the Dark Urge's arms around him, his lips and his breath in his hair.

It would have been enough. It is. And he has it. His hands grasp feebly at the front of his armor, one at last slipping around his waist.

For a moment after the storm, he is quiet, just breathing, warm, existing. When at last he allows himself a second to dry his face, look up, and his eyes are searching for and remembering every line and feature.

The privacy they may have been granted in the quiet retreat of Enver's office - as private as any Chosen of a deity could be afforded - it's surprising how much they also have here on the dock. Surrounded by his companions, each of them is still trying to make sense of their own reality now. For some that's easier than others. Eventually his attention is captured by Astarion who yells, is suddenly racing to find some kind of shade from the sunlight.

It's enough to remind him that he has so many people in his life now that he gives himself to in a way he had never been able to in the past. And he wants to share all of it with Enver, no matter how much concern he may also hold over how different things are now.

There is time now to explore it all, and more. Time to take stock and understand how they move forward together. Though first a quick check-in with his friends, and then on to find the two of them somewhere to retire to together.

Eventually that takes the form of a pitched tent on the outskirts of the city. Up high and overlooking the Gate provides quite a different picture than it had been only recently. He's set everything up and is taking in the view, and reminding himself of how much reparation he will need to do, when he senses he isn't on his own anymore. Glancing over his shoulder, his mouth curves up into a warm smile.

"I know this is different to what you have been used to lately."

Somewhere far away has given him more time to think and breathe, and feel less paranoid that he is going to be arrested at any moment. Despite that few even recognized him.

Even Ravenguard seemed amenable to allowing the Dark Urge to move forward with his intentions. And there were hardly words between them once the party had gone. But it was accepted, tightly, with forewarning, that Enver Gortash had died in the city the previous day.

All things considered, for a dead man, he would have to expect a lot of things to be different, no?

It's just been a very long time since he felt like he was starting over on anything, and getting out of the city makes it far less overwhelming. Being alone, but not. That part was new.

Everything even in the shadows feels colorful and defined and alive. As are they. The brighter lights despite their vividness do not sting. The skyline is now changed in a way he had never seen before. But bathed in a glow dimmed by smoke rising up from down below, the Dark Urge is there -- part of the man he knew and also wholly someone else, but he looks at him like that and he feels safe.

"I can handle different. Give me time."

Brooking no argument is far easier when he's just saved Baldur's Gate, and so when they are given leave to slip out of the city and make for the edges, he's relieved. He's tired in a way that a night of sleep won't fix, but he'll eventually get back to his baseline, and he's grateful he doesn't have to waste more energy arguing.

When he catches Enver's gaze, it's a reminder that the man may need help finding his new baseline. It's still shocking, bizarre even. But if the former human is able to find a way forward, he'll be loyally beside him every step.

"Would you like to join me here?"

He's at the edge of the wall, taking in the view as he finds it, but has enough wherewithal to understand that perhaps this close might not be comfortable. He's not sure where they stand, in fact, but the pressure of having to rush through everything else up to this point simply isn't to be found anymore. They have time.

"...Do you want me to?"

The answer comes after a small pause but still perhaps too quickly. Enver understands there is this space of time when they were last together and then...everything that quickly transpired once they were again. In quick succession. In spite of all that, it is powerful, how immediate the desire is there. To have that same closeness as before.

But again, there is that gap, and he's uncertain how much of that can or should be ignored.

Once upon a time the plan had been that at some point, when the work was done and the plot had been fully realized, they would be together. With duties to follow as they always would. But far less. There would be spoils to enjoy. A new life in its own right.

And in a way, that has been realized through a very different lens. Everything is much more uncertain.

Except for how this feels. And that's something for him to contend with like he always has: with care. Mindfulness.

"I do," he affirms, his expression not remotely careful in comparison to Enver's. Perhaps it's that he doesn't need to school his features into anything for fear of who might see. Given his skill with control - and how little he feels the need to prove that these days - maybe it becomes clear that he doesn't care to hide his feelings beneath his expression. An upshot of their newfound situation, and something he just feels strongly enough about to let the inquisitive curiosity bubble to the surface.

He wants Enver to step in closer and join him, and without a full set of memories to contend with, he's also inviting the man to set the pace and tone. It seems only right that they remain as respectful of each other's boundaries as they must have been in the past.

"I would like to introduce myself properly," he adds after a few moments, turning around from the still smoking vista ahead of them to fully face the other man.

There is something about that affirmation that feels unreal to him. Because it is what he wants to hear, and even knowing everything that had to happen to lead up to it, why does all that feel like not enough? Like there is more owed for it?

The two had once been masters of self-control in their own ways, and differently free in ways the other was not. But a few times something in the Dark Urge had unbuckled when they were alone. Rare moments of penetrating, intense sincerity, and it had been Bane's once-Chosen's duty to respond in kind. To prove it was a secret he would hold for him, say and do what he must to help him right himself, and send him back to his temple unsullied. But also to cherish that something had passed between them that was worth protecting.

To see that same thing, completely unfettered, in the open air and realized, feels like a cruel trick because it is too much of something good. He does venture nearer, just shy of reaching for him.

I would like to introduce myself properly.

It draws his focus, gives him something definite to expect, and he feels a little less at the mercy of the wind.

"Please, do."

The height difference between them isn't as pronounced as it is with others, so his gaze isn't slanted too far down as the man steps closer. There's a moment of confusion that bubbles to the surface, a strange feeling of wondering why they aren't already sharing the same breath. But it's as unfamiliar to him as so much else he doesn't remember, even without a film of amnesia over it.

Even the memories he has back now aren't sharp. Not the way they would be if they had never been disturbed or carved from his brain. The hand he offers is steady, less murderous than it has been for a long time. He holds it out, palm up, waiting to see if the other man feels comfortable or not setting his own into it.

"Memories are returned to me sometimes without prompting. Sometimes with a trigger of the senses. I... could not recall my name, before, could I?"

There is something...not quite what was before, the hand offered. There was a moment that felt similar. An evening after recovering from a public function. Perhaps too public. Showing him the bruises still striping his hips. A promise made and then echoed in kind. A touching of foreheads, something that felt just as intimate as a kiss before the bhaalist had a taste for it.

It still feels like that. Welcome, missed. Enver places his hand in the Dark Urge's with no hesitation.

The question takes him a little. Does that mean he does now? "...No. I imagine if you would have told anyone, it would have been me."

The hand in his own feels like contentedness. Physical but not in a way he may have struggled with before Orin and confronting Bhaal. Rejecting him. Purged of unholy blood and left for dead.

Whatever whispers of violence he still hears are from decades of scars on his psyche, but they're far easier to breathe through. All of it has brought him to this point where he just... feels Enver's hand in his own. Feels the warmth and weight of it and doesn't have to wade through the visceral urge to maim or kill.

He takes a moment to just enjoy it, eyes dropping to look at their hands together before they return to Enver's face.

"My name is Kael." It's what he had surrendered when he had joined the cult, and it had been taken from him gladly. Perhaps it was Bhaal taking back what darkness he had imbued in him that uncovered that memory.

Kael. A small tilt of Enver's head as he takes that in. Perhaps realizing he had heard people in the camp say that name and he had not been sure who they were referring to.

Such a small thing, and something he had never asked about. It still surprised him back then, to hear he had even been born or partially raised anywhere outside the temple. There had been mention of fleeting memories, and he left the door open to eventually explore them further, if he wished.

In the once-human's mind, they would have time for all that. Once the plan was finished.

In a way neither had expected, perhaps he was right.

But a name had never been among those things discussed.

(And he had considered. Fleetingly. Somewhat jokingly. Asking what he would prefer he call him. Since The Dark Urge wasn't exactly easy to call out in bed. He so rarely referred to him; when they were speaking it was so clear that he was talking to him. But every time the man used his own given name, it did something to him, felt unfair not to be able to give that back.)

"It suits you." The beginnings of a smile touch his lips. "Kael."

It's a momentarily momentous feeling for his name - the one he remembered had been given to him by his parents - to be cushioned so neatly upon Enver's tongue. Noteworthy in how his mind seems to latch on to a feeling not too dissimilar from the other man's. Fleeting memories of his opposite number's name on his own lips. To have his own spoken aloud now by somebody he thinks he would have shared it with first, had they been together, feels briefly rapturous.

"I enjoy the way it sounds when you say it," he confesses easily, not all too interested in trying to play anything as reserved or not as affected as he is. Very simply, he does not imagine a moment where he wouldn't want to share his delight in this.

It feels like there is so much to catch up on, but he can barely contain his need to step in closer and do away with the last remaining moonlight between them.

"Enver, I..."

It's not so much hesitation as a pause as he feels a wave of emotion start to crest inside him. How close to devastation they had skirted in more than just a plan now aborted. Beyond that. He can hardly keep the significance of this moment to a manageable level.

He should ask - he knows that - but the moment calls for nothing less than the way he lifts his free hand and curls it around the back of the shorter man's neck. Stepping in, he presses his forehead to Enver's and, if he's allowed, dips down just enough to seal their mouths together in a chaste kiss.

There is a small measure of heat that rises to his features then. Not just at being told how it sounds for him to repeat the name, but also that his mind readily supplies It probably won't be the last time I enjoy saying it either.

But the Dark Urge -- Kael -- says his name, and it strikes him once more how it fees to hear his own name, to hear him say it. Something he's been homesick for, if he would have ever thought to use the word. But he's never missed anything like this.

His breath and his bloodflow are quickening even as the larger man does nothing more than touch the back of his neck. And of course he allows that kiss (he had promised him one after all this was done after all). More than allows it, pushes up to meet it with the abandon and jolting panic of suddenly feeling yourself fall.

It is as the one before, and all those that felt like they were an eternity ago, and they are his. Perfect, sating, and pulling long-dreamed-of-but-suppressed hungers to the surface. But unlike the ones when they were different people: No longer in the privacy of his office. Somewhere open. In the air. Still private in its own way, but free.

He slips a band behind Kael's neck in a mirror of his own gesture.

Arms shifting until they're encircling Enver both fondly and protectively, Kael pours what feels like a far broader range of emotion into their shared kiss. Even the small bank of memories he has of their time together is enough for him to contend with the fact that, before the great betrayal, his world was shades of red and not much more.

Having spent long enough away from the cult, from Bhaal and his memories of being bhaalspawn, it had allowed a far greater number of colours into his awareness. Gratitude feels brand new in a way that he doesn't recall before.

So his mouth is soft against Enver's. Pliant in a way it may not have been before, and as careful and considered as he is, the kiss itself is filled with a yawning kind of desperation. He doesn't want to ask to never be apart again, that doesn't feel right either. But he can feel himself growing more as a person with this new development. That all this time he had been - and still is - in love.

When they break for air his eyes are heavily lidded, a reliable kind of comfort gently coaxing him into a place of almost boneless contentedness. Perhaps before it would have been the heat of arousal that rose up to greet them both viciously. For now, he's happy enough just existing in each other's spaces.

"I do not know what the future holds, but I find myself more eager to find out than anytime I can recall."

Enver feels something in the other man grasping on, a need, but not necessarily the same force behind it, and even after all this time, he can feel that and adjust accordingly, matching that energy without overwhelming. Before long in their meetings, rather than take that as a signal to be analyzed, to suss out potential and meaning, he would have received it as a need to find an openly to quietly question. To keep them both upright.

It was never allowed to be just a moment to be still, to unfasten the tighter strings they kept on their behaviors. Not without the context of the bedroom, anyhow. Not without being especially careful. Not without keeping it brief and then rectified.

That constraint is...gone.

"At the moment, I'm not certain I care." For anyone else that would seem dismissive. But all Enver Gortash does is worry about what is coming next and whether every step has been covered, carefully mapped, a good deal of time in advance. "...I never thought I would feel that way. But if you're here, I'm not sure it matters."

Dawn will come and with it clarity, he's sure. It will matter again in some form.

A small, quiet laugh, more at himself than anything. "You spend so much time thinking of all the things you were never able to say, what you would if you had the chance and I've lost so much in the recent -- just not having enough time to try, and now I feel like I've gone blank. Where the Hells does one even begin?"

"There is no need for you to find words," comes a quiet but firm promise, and in the moment Kael feels almost dizzy from their newfound reality. It is overwhelming, positive but an incredible amount to think of when all that has just passed is barely concluded.

In the end, he rests his hands at the smaller man's shoulders, thumbs gently stroking at the sides of his neck. The flash of memory he finds is of the feeling he could as easily slide his hands around Enver's neck and squeeze the life from him. But rather than an urge, it is just a memory. A disturbing one, but not a compulsion. He shakes his head, the movement possibly coming across as a bid to keep himself awake.

"We can begin by seeing to what we need. It feels as though sleep has been harder to find lately. And now I can think of nothing else but to retire to a bedroll with you and hold you until it takes both of us."

His gaze tracks sideways, his eyes settling on the tent big enough for the both of them. He can no longer think in ways that make a lot of sense, his mind newly burnt of the tadpole that had been in residence for so long exhausted. He certainly doesn't recall that sleep wasn't something he used to do.

"Rest with me?"

"...Yes."

It feels like the second that he is reminded that he must be tired, his body finally recognizes how much it as been through in the last day. Even if it is technically a new body, his mind and memory was strong enough to carry the exhaustion he was already saddled with into it, compounded with the stress that was coming back from death and nearly dying again while running and fighting nonstop for what felt like hours.

And it is only as they make their way in that direction that the less-important details finally begin to come through. Amid memories of a similar quiet night they spent, with the Dark Urge gently ushering him to bed. There is now also where they are. He hasn't slept on a bedroll since he was a teenager. Even when he was traveling before, there were inns. Cots.

And then, "...Do you sleep?" A slow blink as he looks down at his hands. "Do I, now?" What a strange question to find himself asking, but he feels heavy as he thinks that there was no way that trancing was going to have any sort of impact.

"Yes... I sleep," Kael replies slowly, his hand guided the other man towards the tent as though he hasn't yet put two and two together. He cannot blame either of them for wanting nothing more than to crash and burn into some soft fabrics for the next few hours.

Eventually his brain offers a last ditch attempt at thought processing as he pulls the tent flap aside. Waiting for Enver to retire inside, he thinks through the question.

"Did I not used to?" He asks as he's eventually following the human into the tent, careful not to bump into him even in this low light. It occurs to him afterwards that this must be new for Enver, being able to see this well without much in the way of light to see by.

It is...something else entirely. But oddly helps, all things considered. It makes a new place, a new concept, a lot easier to settle into when there is nothing really hidden. He's already dressed down, just in a single layer that's clean and simple and made him feel like a person again once they got here. Even if he avoided looking at himself as much as possible.

For a moment he considers whether there should be less but his fingers stop. Still uncertain how he appears, really, and not wanting to think about that right now.

"I'm not certain; you really only stayed with me once, and you may very well have been awake the whole night." His head tilts as he watches him, curious. It seems like a lot right now, to ask if he remembers.

It seems Kael takes that piece of information on board but doesn't concern himself with it too much. Whether or not he used to sleep or - what he guesses could have been the case - trance, it isn't for now to understand what may have been. What he knows now is that he definitely does sleep, and though there have been more than a few times in the past he might worry about that, the tiredness is so consuming he can barely imagine how he would do anything untoward in his unconsciousness.

The thought still occurs regardless and for a moment he looks slightly perturbed before forcing himself to move on. What happened with Alfira had been while he'd been filled up with Bhaal's unholy blood. He doesn't feel the same now, but his thoughts do still plague him in ways that are disturbing.

"Tomorrow perhaps you can tell me what you remember?" He's taking up a lot of space in the tent though he crams himself right up at one edge to give Enver as much leftover space as possible. He's too tired to think on much more than just getting comfortable and surrendering to sleep.

"Gladly." It is half murmured.

Getting settled becomes a series of tasks, just sort of blindly followed with little thought behind it, which is in itself almost comforting. The space is limited, but the man with him might be overthinking it, as much as one can when they are half awake. It's not unusual that he thinks this way: he is not a small man.

As it is, in the moments it takes for both of them to be gone, where they end up is where they remain, almost motionless until well after the dawn. Enver remains close despite the knowledge of what Kael is, or was, and it is a testament to what he believes he understands of the man that he would be willing to be not only unconscious in his presence, but in contact with him.

When slowly consciousness begins to climb its way back into his body, he feels no aches from the rougher surface, or from sharing that space. Memory returns before panic at his surroundings has a chance to set in. There is still this hum of anxiety eventually, because new -- uncertainty -- no plans. But his eyes are open and he's sitting up, and he's there.

It might be a dream.

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Toppling from Cauldron to Blaze

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