Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s not difficult to track her way to the address given to her, even though she’d gotten unpleasant bodily fluids on the paper. She knows the Lower City like she knows her own ribcage, and though she has less cause to visit the Outer City she’s familiar enough with its dirt roads and stables to complete this trip alone. It’s not an impressive address that she’s been given. Just a house on the other side of Basilisk’s Gate. Not in a poor neighbourhood soaked in the mince-meat air of the slaughterhouse complex, but just outside the walled community of Little Calimsham in Norchapel. She can’t be sure if he’s playing pretend-peasantry or if he’s following instructions from his god. The best way to infiltrate the masses is to be one of them, after all, it’s a technique she uses often enough. You can worm your way into their confidence or tiptoe your way through locked cellar doors. Access to and knowledge of the labyrinthine Undercity is a bonus in achieving the latter, but tonight she’s chosen to travel above land. She can’t see the sky from the sewers, and there’s a nice view from the top of Basilisk’s Gate. The last vestiges of the sun are bleeding out across the horizon as fog draws in from the sea, tinted orange by the dying light. The Flaming Fist barracks built into the wall of the gate should be more off-putting than it is, especially now the passage is closed. Curfew isn’t exactly law-enforced, but very few people need entry to or exit from the city at this time of night and those who do are cast under heavy suspicion. Not her. A novice from her own church is on duty and, eager to gain her favour, is more than happy to distract the others from his cohort to allow her to clamber up and over the gate. 

The split between the sectors of the city are immediate. In the Upper City the streets are well-maintained, there’s a constant watch funded by the patriars, and magical orbs of light not unlike those floating around the cobblestones of Waterdeep keep the nice clean streets bright. In the Lower City there are lamplighters, the occasional Fist patrol and countless crimes committed in each alley on the hour every hour. The Outer City is quieter and darker, and there are more horses snickering in their sleep than people offering a full night’s entertainment for even less than the rent of a stable. The path is simpler: one main road with turn-offs to the different villages instead of the indecipherable pattern of alleys and stairways and closes. She winds her way through the shadows until she reaches her destination and then considers her options for entry. Something metallic shines at the door, undoubtedly a trap, and going through the front door is boring anyway. The windows on the ground floor are likely trapped as well, if he knows anything about his own reputation. Upstairs might be her best chance but there’s nothing easily climbable on the walls, no trellis or conveniently out-of-line bricks to use as footholds. His next-door neighbour has an apple tree in their goat yard. From the bough that reaches out the closest to the window she wants, it only takes a whisper of a cantrip to drop a fingerful of acid onto the lock. The acid makes short work of the little latch, the window swinging slowly open to allow her to slip through. 

Her feet find a runner rug, limiting the sound of her landing. Not that she doesn’t want to get caught. She was invited, after all. She’s just treating herself to a little tour first. There are no personal touches. None that can possibly belong to him, anyway. A small painting on the wall depicts three girls, sisters with the same eyes. She pockets the silver snuff box that sits on a long, thin table pressed against the opposite wall, but the clay pot beside it doesn’t hold anything more interesting than dried orange rinds whose scent faded a long time ago. This isn’t a place where he lives. It’s just where he happens to be. There are three bedrooms up here. One for the parents, one for the two older girls, and the third for the youngest girl and a baby. A baby boy, judging by the image painted into a locket found in the parent’s room. If there had been anything particularly valuable or specifically interesting he’s either hidden it or used it. She’s left with little else but to trot down the stairs to find him. He’s converted the sitting room that the stairs lead her to into a kind of study: a desk where the chaise must have been, the chaise shoved against a wall under a window. He’s neither sitting at the desk nor waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs. He’s attending to a wheeled drinks cabinet beside the chaise, deliberately distanced from the fireplace.

“Bhaalist.”

“Banite.”

“You found the house.”

“It’s not yours.”

“Smythe, I believe they were.” He turns from the trolley and offers her a glass. Mermaid whisky, common. He’s not sure if she’s worth the good stuff yet. Shrewd of him. She takes it anyway and drinks when he does. She has listened to whispers of Gortash’s name grow louder and louder over the last few years. An arms dealer much better than his lack of experience would suggest. The Guild has taken note of him, and he’s all but replaced the leader of the Baldurian branch of the Zhentarim. He doesn’t look like much. His hair is untidy, his jaw shadowed with stubble, and his clothes only a little fanciful. But it’s the ones that don’t look like much you should watch. He is Bane’s Chosen. She has been ordered to at least consider his allyship. That is what this mission is for, a test of his abilities and his faith. For him, it is a test of hers. Following his own god’s suggestions of allying with the Chosen of Bhaal, it had admittedly taken time to find Dana. She was quick, clean, and did not stick around long enough to leave tracks. Useful traits, to be sure, but frustrating. They’re similar enough in height that neither of them look up or down at the other. She’s pulled her hood back, freeing an abundance of thin braids that slide over her shoulders. A chain shirt glints through her cloak - battlemage armour for ease of casting. 

“Charming family.” Dana comments off-handedly as she drifts towards the desk. A map of sorts is laid out upon its surface. 

“Indeed,” Gortash agrees, following the path her eyes track, “These are blueprints of the Hall of Wonders. Not original, unfortunately, but from the last renovation. The Bhaalist artefacts are kept here in the northeast chamber as part of a larger exhibition regarding Tethyr.”

“Those torture racks were designed and crafted by Eler Had, a Bhaalspawn who allied with Gromnir Il-Khan and died nobly in efforts to protect his more powerful brother. It is not right that his legacy be exposed for all the Gate to see,” she taps her fingers over the marker that indicates where the racks are displayed before looking at Gortash. His eyes are as dark as her own, hiding the calculations he must be making, “This is not a stealth mission. They must be punished.”

“I have no reason to object,” he assures her, “I thought this might also be of interest,” Gortash’s own hand, contained in a glove, points out another marking, “There are bones here. A kobold’s skeleton. They call them the Bones of Bhaalspawn Toop.”

“Toop the Brave.” Dana tells him. After the meeting in which he had told her of the artefacts being held in the Hall of Wonders she had sent some of her own novices to ensure he was telling the truth. They too had seen the bones and felt their power, equal to the disgust of a Bhaalspawn being treated so horridly after death.

“A kobold, brave?” Gortash asks, and his scornful scoff is not well enough disguised. Dana’s head snaps back to him.

“A human, smart?” She counters. 

“You are human, are you not, Bhaalist?” A duel with an equal mind for a change. Enlightening.

“Not entirely, Banite.”

Chapter Text

Neither Gortash nor Dana are quick to trust. They have good reason, besides their faith in the gods they follow. An alliance doesn’t require anything more than a business relationship. There’s no reason for them to become friends. And yet. Over time she appears in his safehouse in Norchapel more and more often, hopping in through the window she re-breaks every time Gortash fixes it. Eventually, he gives up. That is Dana’s door. Sometimes he’ll find her there, waiting for him, when he returns from a meeting or a mission she wasn’t involved in. True, an equal number of times she’s found him loitering around Candulhallow’s funeral home by the city graveyard waiting for her, but more often they meet at the house. It has changed since their first meeting here. It looks a little more like a place people still live in, but only a little. He’s had the walls re-papered and the children’s beds removed to convert one of their rooms into a proper study, moving his desk up from the sitting room. It is in the study he is sitting when he hears Dana drop through the window.

“In here,” Gortash calls, knowing full well that if he stays silent she’ll simply wander around the house to her own desire until she has need of him or he of her, and he has plans for this day. Her route alters from her path down the stairs to turn sharply into the study, “What brings you?” he asks without turning from his work. She doesn’t always have an answer for this.

“What are you working on?” Her hair does not fall upon his shoulder when she leans over him, she must have it piled atop her head, and her hand follows the path of his arm until their fingers hover over the same scratchy notes made to label delicate diagrams.

“Gondian inventions. As irritating as they are, their work is ingenious.”

“Equal to the Ironhands?”

“In most cases, I would say so, but their experience with automatons is unrivalled. There are a number of old Gondian families in the city,” Ah, automatons. He has been researching this particular topic for some time. They each have their half-dozen-or-so agents embedded in the Flaming Fist, the primary protectors of Baldur’s Gate, but to supplant them with an organization under their thumbs would be tantamount to taking control of the city. He seems to have chosen the Gondians as his route, “And as we both know, treasured families do make for such effective leverage,” The prospect brings a pleasant laugh to Dana’s chest, and he turns his head to catch the smile before it is gone but finds himself quite distracted by something else, “ Fuck, you smell.” 

“Thank you.” Dana replies sardonically, pressing closer even as Gortash abandons his notes to push her back.

“Do not rub it all over me, you animal. ” This, of course, only encourages her to push ever further in.

“Animal, am I?” Dana’s fingers weave into his hair and wrench his head to the side to expose the skin of his neck as she dodges the elbow meant to dig into her stomach. Cold green magic comes to the tip of her other index finger and she pushes it into the column of his throat. He’s watched her use this exact spell to reduce a man twice his size to skin tight against dead bones. She has not hurt him yet, and part of their alliance is built on the trust that she will not do him harm. However, there have been moments like this when more skin is bared than usual and something dark clouds Dana’s vision that promises the violence he’s seen her inflict on others turned on him and he does not shy away from it. In order to trust her he must know her limits. There is no other reason to test her. The chill of necromancy magic drives further into the muscles of his throat the longer she keeps her finger there.

“What, are you going to bite me now?” He shouldn’t goad her, but there is something inescapably intoxicating about the push and pull and the question of who will fold first. Her grip tightens and it hurts, but an unexpectedly pleasant sensation rises with the pain.

“Little lordling, do not tempt me,” Dana whispers against the shell of his ear, “And do not forget that I can hear your blood,” she releases him and steps back in the same moment. Breath rattles from him, but he manages to conceal the shake, “I delivered a fresh litter of gnolls before I left.” The edge of her voice has feathered out into joy.

“I must admit I do not understand your fascination with the creatures.”

“They are born from death with a great deal of gore, and I am a necromancer born of Bhaal’s dead flesh, what is there to not understand?” Dana points out. She shakes her head to relieve it of the clouds in her eyes, shakes her hand to rid it of the magic. She had gotten entirely too close this time. The need to maim is ever-present, but when it pertains to Gortash it is moulded into something entirely different that she has not managed to dissect, “I can change, if you insist.”

“I do, there’s something I want to show you.”

“Follow?” Dana proposes, “I did have a reason for coming here.” She steps out of the study and into the room next to it, where the two youngest children used to sleep and now an assortment of miscellaneous objects are stored. There’s a ghastly stain on the floor of blood that had seeped through the rug and onto the boards when Dana had taken an unexpected guest into the room. She’s been scolded for it several times. Today her target is the old wardrobe in the corner containing the clothes that belonged to the previous tenants of the house. She doesn’t look back to ensure Gortash is following her, but he has indeed set down his charcoal and his graphite to stand by the other door.

“Go on, what’s your reason?” he asks, so she knows she can hear him through the door.

“Did you have the same dream as I?” Dana asks, “Father came to me once more, with further instruction.”

“As Bane did to me. The Dead Three are incomplete.”

“You know what this means? Our alliance is strong enough to proceed with the next step of their plan.”

“We are strong enough. We have never faltered.” Gortash says. The door opens for a moment so that Dana can push her head through the gap,

“Never,” she agrees with a flash of a smile. She returns another moment later, wearing not the clothes of the previous lady of the house but the man’s. As much she enjoys spinning in fine gowns when she has the chance, she also likes the cut of gentlemen’s jackets, “Forgive me, Gortash.” She knows his first name, but also that he prefers to be referred to by his second.

“For what?” he asks, unaware that she has crossed him in any way. 

“Might I stay here, just this night?”

“Are you sure your newborn pups won’t wither away without you?” He asks, turning towards the stairs with her.

“Sceleritas can handle them for an evening. It’s Orin. I’d thought the stories of sisters being irritants were exaggerated. Suffice to say that they’re not.”

“So terrible as to chase the Chosen of Bhaal away from her temple?” It is a mark of how their bond has evolved that he can poke fun at her with his words. Not only to test her limits, either, but also to see exactly how long they can suspend teasing conversation.

“She’s jealous. Outrageously so. She thinks herself deserving of Bhaal’s favour, and I suppose she is for her artistry alone, but she still has so much to learn about restraint. Better to put some distance between us lest we carve into each other’s bones again.”

“She doesn’t know this place, does she?”

“No one does,” Dana assures him. They come to a stop at the bottom of the stairs while Gortash considers, “I know you only have your bed, I’ll sleep on the chaise. This…this is a place where I feel able to sleep. Where I’m comfortable.” This is an admission she herself has been considering for several months. Bhaalspawn do not feel a sense of belonging just anywhere. With hope, Gortash knows the weight of this. His eyes meet hers, and he nods. She nods back, as though vocal acknowledgement of the arrangement would put his agreement on a flagpole to shake in the gods’ faces. Having reached their destination, Gortash gestures towards a door. Not the open archway that leads to the kitchen. Or the front door. The third door, that Dana has never touched. The door to the cellar. She has never been permitted to enter, or even to look. It’s a workshop of sorts, she’s fairly certain. It’s where all his scrap metal and diagrams end up, and it’s what leaves him smelling of grease when he emerges from the depths. He prides himself on the things he makes with his own hands. She has not often been afforded the privilege of seeing his work, had been surprised by the notion of his being an artificer when she’d learned of it, previously thinking of him as nothing but a clever arms dealer. Then again, she is a child of Bhaal who has versed herself in Myrkulite magic. 

“After you.”

Chapter Text

“Comfortable, are we?” Gortash asks, shifting his weight onto one foot and leaning more heavily on the fist pushing into the thin table that holds Dana’s tools. The necromancer looks up at him with venom curdling in her eyes from delight. In a pair of forceps, she holds a bloody tooth. A string of spit still connects the tooth to its previous owner. Dana straddles his middle, pinning him to the embalming table and holding his jaw open so she can hear the groans that start to gurgle, “Don’t let him choke on his own blood.” Gortash warns. Disappointment glances over Dana’s features. She’s been difficult to reach today, having one of her episodes. When she isn’t quite herself. When she goes too far. They’ve worked out tricks to overcome the urge, as she calls it, when it isn’t practical. They usually work. Eyes fixed on her ally, she does manage to shake it off. She wriggles back just enough to let the man sit up and spit the blood out of his mouth, but the moment he stops coughing he’s pushed back down onto the embalming table. A mage hand brings her a shallow metal bowl she drops the tooth in, visibly relishing the sound of it. She pokes her fingers into the bowl and starts to talk,

“That was your maxillary lateral incisor. Now, I was nice to you. I got rid of these first,” Dana shows him the teeth in question, “Mandibular bicuspids from each side, then that nasty little rotten bugger.” She counts all four teeth aloud, letting them clink back into the bowl as she names them. It really is a wonder to watch her work.

“I came to you for help .” The man can still talk, somehow, though his words are gummy and wailing.

“You wanted a tooth removed, yes,” Dana confirms, “It’s not my fault you didn’t specify which one. Nor is it my fault that you were too tight-fisted to go to an actual surgeon.” She swings her leg over him to hop down from the table, the ruffles of her baby blue skirt now streaked with blood and saliva. It’s not like he’s going to run away, not with his feet manacled to the table and his hands bound in his lap. Dana is drawn to Gortash’s side, her fingers fluttering over her instruments while he talks. He’s good at talking.

“We know you have the money for a surgeon,” with a simple gesture, Gortash silences the man’s babbling offers of bribery and continues as though never interrupted, “We don’t want your money-”

“What do you wan-” the shriek is cut off when Dana flings a hand in his direction and spits a spell,

“Let him finish.” She orders as all sound is sucked from the poor man’s vocal cords. Gortash nods his thanks, and then continues,

“What I want is your position. Dana here just needs to let off some steam.”

“My little sister is driving me up the walls. Do your sisters irritate you, Benedict? What are their names again?” Their eyes slide to meet each other like magnets, their side profiles cast in unsettling shadows. This back-and-forth is well practised by now but the excitement never fades. It burns bright in Dana’s eyes, bringing out that reddish demonic shine, and in turn glints in Gortash’s beetle-black pupils. 

“Amanda and Florence,” a smile stretches between them. They have two different modes they switch between. Gortash is better at the former, flattery putting people at ease, opening pursestrings and petticoats. Dana excels at the latter, making people uncomfortable without making a sound, all little glances and tiny changes in body language, “Florence just had a baby, didn’t she? Named him after you. We don’t have to bother them if you cooperate.” Gortash explains. With a gesture, he indicates for Dana to take over. She selects an instrument and moves back to the embalming table.

“You see this, Benedict? Nod. Good boy. They call this the pear of anguish. I can put it in your mouth or I can shove it up your arse, then turn this little knob here and open it up until it pops your jaw or rips your rectum,” Dana holds up a second, similar tool. It’s a slightly different shape, more cylindrical, and it is lined with spikes, “This one closes tighter and tighter and tighter and-” Gortash clears his throat, effectively snapping her from the reverent repetition, “Take a wild guess as to where it goes.”

“Tell the nice wizard what I want to know and she’ll let you keep your cock.”

“But that’s the best part!” Dana protests, eyes turning back to her ally even as she runs a single finger up the man’s leg until she reaches the button of his britches. A few too many of her too-sharp teeth are bared. Some people find it off-putting. Most people don’t even notice. Benedict has noticed.

“I’ll get you another one.” Gortash replies. Dana’s eyes tick very deliberately downwards, then back up.  

“Promise?” Oh? It’s happened once. Twice. Five times. Eighteen times in the last couple of years. The first had been after the Mephistopheles heist, bodies flying high on pure adrenaline - so they’d said. It wouldn’t happen again, they said. It did. Fuelled most often by pure, simple need that is never discussed or explained afterwards. 

“Promise.” Chosen of Bane and Bhaal are often doomed to loneliness. There’s nothing wrong with taking measures to avoid isolation-induced insanity when they’ve lucked out of getting their kicks elsewhere. Plus, it’s a non-extreme method that has proved effective for curbing Dana’s urge to destroy and maim and pulverize. Nothing more.

It only takes another forty-five minutes to get the necessary information out of the man. Perhaps twenty or so of those minutes are superfluous but they keep to their promises, Benedict’s dick is still intact. He won’t get much use out of it, being dead, but Gortash’s word is his bond.

“Excellent work, as always, slayer.”

“Why, thank you, lordling.” Dana’s tongue flicks out to find a trail of Benedict’s blood that is dribbling into the corner of her mouth. 

“In a matter of months, it will be lord,” Gortash, spotless, scans the blood that covers his ally. It’s far more effective than any of the powders and pastes patriars use to try and make themselves prettier. He gives in to temptation and hooks a finger into Dana’s belt buckle to pull her a single step forward so that the ruffles of her skirt fluff out around his knees and blood smudges onto his good trousers, “You have just put me in the Vanthampur’s pocket.”

“I used my initiative,” Dana tells him, “And Benedict couldn’t hold his tongue.”

“On the Council of Four’s belt.” Gortash goes on. He wants to hear her train of thought. Bhaalspawn are more than mindless murder. Dana has a mind, a good one. Between them, they’ll have the city in a chokehold in no time. Her head tips to the side and their chests rise and fall in rhythm. 

“Portyr’s far too easily swayed, there’s no way to guarantee his loyalty. His niece, on the other hand, she has a good head on her shoulders. Stelmane’s on the outs and Ravengard's sway over the Fist is more use to us while he’s alive.”

“A pity his son left the city. I’d let you cut off his balls.”

“I’d love the opportunity. Thalamra Vanthampur wants power, and she has her own deals with the hells. Problem is, her advisor’s gone missing. She doesn’t know that yet, of course, but when the tenday mark hits…you are in the perfect position to take over.” There are additional perks to whispering in the ear of the Master of Drains and Underways. Gortash will be able to turn her head away from the sewers and the Undercity, and Dana in turn won’t have to guard her temple and her subjects quite so fiercely. She can start on her expansion, the development of the morphic pools for the elder brain. 

“You truly would be a terrifying adversary if you weren’t on my side.” Gortash admits. His shoulders are relaxed but the fingers drumming against the wood of the table beside them promise such wicked mischief. He’s done something to her, the Banite. She can’t be sure if he’s broken something or fixed it, but she wants him to do it again and again-

“ Our side,” Dana corrects, wearing a smile that is often mistaken as a threat but is genuine, “Lucky for you that I am.” She’s covered in blood. Her eyes still promise violence. There’s a dead body two feet away. The room is full of torture instruments and severed limbs, and yet he’d take her there on the floor, on her table, against the wall. If he didn’t have other plans. She’s done something to him, the Bhaalspawn. Is it a gift from Bhaal or a curse on the Banite? 

“Can you finish cutting him up later, there’s something I want to show you in the workshop.”

“Of course.” Dana nods and follows him out of the room. She turns her hands over and over to make her wrists crackle. Her bones have started doing that in the last few years, creaking and cracking in odd places. Sceleritas Fel has assured her it’s nothing out of the ordinary, simply her father preparing her. Preparing her for what, she doesn’t know, but she doesn’t want to think about her father right now. There are more pressing subjects at hand. The flip of her stomach as shadows move over the exaggerated shoulders of Gortash’s coat, for example. Anticipation is a delicious starter.

She steps out of the room and seals the door behind her. It’s an offshoot of the cellar, an extra room Gortash had allowed her to convert into a laboratory of sorts several years ago. No one can be heard screaming through the thick door, nor can the various smells of rot and decay and death punch through. The rest of the cellar is still his workshop, littered with scraps of metal and half-finished projects that she understands because he sits and talks about them for hours on end if he’s the right side of tipsy, but over time the safe house has morphed into being as much hers as his. She’s upgraded from the chaise to an actual bed in what had been the storage room upstairs. There’s a consistent stock of cherries, even when they’re out of season. There are clear lines of territory drawn, lines that are not crossed. Except for…approximately eighteen exceptions. About to become nineteen.  

“Here.” He’s holding out a dagger. Reverently, in both hands. Dana handles it with the same care. The hilt is a perfect replication of the hilt of the dagger she wields most often in her left hand, the one named Bloodthirst, formed of the blood of Bhaal’s first victim. Bhaal’s symbol is wrought in the circular part of the grip where the netherstone is set in her other weapon. Where Bloodthirst’s red blade forms a single curve this dagger’s blade twists back and forth, designed to nick the flesh as many times as possible in a single cut. More, the wiggling blade is deep green in colour, with a line of red carving through its centre to the tip that hums ever so slightly with magic. 

“It’s beautiful. Where on Toril did you find a smith with the skill and patience to create such a thing?” Dana passes it from hand to hand. It is perfectly balanced, perfectly weighted for her weaker right hand. The crafting of such a weapon must have taken months if not over a year. She looks back to Gortash to ask a secondary question of how someone could possibly know how to weight it for her and finds that the slightest colour has come to his face. She can hear it in his ears, in his cheeks…elsewhere. He made it. “Enver, your abilities continue to surpass my expectations,” his first name slips out without her permission, emotions she doesn’t think she has ever felt and cannot name welling behind her eyes and pulling a spring tight in the pit of her stomach, “What have you named it?”

“Stillmaker.”

“Explain it to me.” She demands. The work that has gone into this weapon, the effort. She can’t name the feeling most prominent in her brain. It’s not quite lust or desire or simple want, though those are mixed in to a lesser degree. She doesn’t know and it might just drive her mad and it gets worse the more he talks,

“The red line, it’s a chamber that holds a paralytic. Enough to render a dragonborn motionless. If my calculations and spellwork are correct, once used it should refill at the stroke of midnight.”

“I have no doubt that your work is perfect,” Dana tells him. He’s never failed her. She can’t help the next words, a question, “For me?” she doesn’t think anyone’s ever given her something so beautiful before. Useful. Personal. 

“Bhaal’s symbol, Bane’s colour. A gift from one to the other. A mark of our alliance,” he hesitates over that last word just a hair too long, “From me. For you.” Dana sets the dagger back down in the velvet-lined box he’d picked it up from. Presented like the finest of jewels. They are at a stalemate. Dana cannot understand the tidal wave of emotion. Gortash cannot gauge it from her expression. This gift is out of the norm. Outside of their alliance. Not suggested or endorsed by their gods. It is them. Purely them. It is an irreparable blurring of the line that he had proposed and she had accepted. They’re too far gone now. Dana does the only thing she can think of.

When they have sex, when they give in, there are rules. Rules that have been strictly followed the other eighteen times. They do not kiss. They do not talk. They bite and curse and suck bruises onto legs and necks. They do not entertain the idea of complicating a perfectly good alliance, of risking their gods’ favour. Dana dares. She moves. She kisses him. The rules crash and burn. There is no moment of shock, only reaction. Gortash catches them before they can fall from the momentum of Dana’s push, hand reaching and tightening around her and pushing back to the point of almost overcorrecting. Despite their separate experiences this kiss is open-mouthed, it’s messy, it’s wet. It’s imperfect. It’s everything. Blood-stained fingers dig into his shoulders and gauntleted hands lose themselves in the ruffles of her skirt with no real goal but to touch. They crush and crash like waves onto the shore and something rattles when they turn together and Gortash’s back bumps into a set of shelves.

“Dana. Dana , ” She’s never heard this tone in his voice before. Never. She could get drunk on it. Her nose slides along his, her cheek pushing into his, marking him with blood that doesn’t belong to either of them. The taste of the Wyvern whisky he’d been drinking when she’d brought Benedict to the house still lingers on his tongue, “ Dana.” The gold filigree of the gauntlet is cold against the soft skin of her neck as fingers trail up to her jaw, the claw-like ends leaving a sting that only leaves her craving that little bit more.

“Enver-” the second utterance of his name proves to be too much for him to handle, the heel of his hand pushing into Dana’s lower back and he kisses her in return until she bites his bottom lip, digs her teeth in until the skin begins to rip and a single drop of blood leaks into her mouth. She had never actually tasted his blood before this. It’s as good as the whisky. Her fist is balled up against his chest. The line isn’t entirely gone yet. They can erase it or they can redraw it. “Show me how you talked Lady Jannath out of her inheritance.”

Chapter Text

Gortash wakes up alone. For most of his life, he has woken up alone. For most of his life, he had woken up on a hard floor. Now, he’s far more likely to find himself in a bed. Normally his own. On occasion he rolls over to check if whichever patriar he’d tumbled with is still asleep and, if so, extracts himself from the room as quietly as possible to find food and a small valuable that won’t be missed. He’ll usually leave a note, they love notes, a dozen words posed well enough will have them on their knees again in a tenday no matter what he steals. On these occasions, a game is made of who can find who first: Gortash stepping out of the house with as much dignity as he can muster or Dana leaning against a wall somewhere nearby twirling a dagger point deeper and deeper into the pad of her index finger. One or the other wins and Dana pushes him into an alley and he kisses her until he smells like her again, like cedar and cinnamon. Dana doesn’t care much for the cloying floral scents of toff toiletries. More often he wakes with her, in the Norchapel safe house. She sleeps quite literally like the dead - her arms crossed over her chest, which barely moves to signify her breaths, her face a perfect mask and her lips ever so slightly parted - and it’s a good night if she doesn’t startle awake every few hours with murder roaring in her blood or fear shaking her bones. These disturbances have been happening at a higher frequency in the months since Gortash was named a lord and elevated to a high military advisory position. Today, he wakes alone. 

Dana’s side of the bed is cold. How long has she been gone? The pillow she punches into place every night, no matter how exhausted she is, is undented. She did not sleep at all. How could he miss that? As he moves to find shoes, clothes, anything suitable to go outside in, his body complains. Chronic creaking in his joints, phantom pressure of Dana’s fingers on his throat. Poor excuses. Her daggers are polished almost to the point of becoming mirrors, carefully set on the windowsill for the cleaning solution to dry. Her shoes are gone, as is his waistcoat. Fair play, he supposes, her shirt had been ripped to ribbons the night before. With hope, she hasn’t gone wandering the streets. Now is not the time for a Bhaalspawn murder spree, not yet. She’d blow the top off the entire plan, not to mention revealing the revival of the Bhaalist cult. They’ve come close before, on nights she could not contest the urges anymore. He’s found her in the slaughterhouse district coated in pig blood and hauled her back to the house and into a bath to clean it all off before letting her loose in her laboratory. He’s found her in Little Calimsham with a family reduced to bones at her feet, and as he’d stepped through the door she’d whirled a circle of magic and raised every one of them into a ghoul under her command. He’s found her in the Lower City graveyard, graves erupting around her and coffins swinging open as she prepares a platoon of zombies to terrorise the drunken patrons of taverns trying to stumble home. These events don’t even become setbacks - they serve to sow further fear among the people - and the partners have always nipped it in the bud. She has always managed to regain control, to keep herself from causing irreversible damage to the plan. She has that strength, that wisdom that her sister Orin lacks. Dana’s kills are purposeful and deliberated over. Worthy of Bhaal’s attention, favour, faith. Compulsive, perhaps, when a far greater and darker power is channelling itself through her, but not without reason if she can help it.

Gortash finds that she hasn’t gone far, which is probably a good thing. A lord should not leave a house that no one knows about in little more than shoes and a robe that is designed for sleeping rather than spellcasting. The fucking butler’s here. Rancid little bastard. It had taken him a while to find the house, but he’d found it. He can track Dana quite effectively, but he can only zero in on her location if she spends enough time there. He worships Dana, in a way that would be disconcerting if he wasn’t an envoy directly sent by Bhaal to guide her. If anyone outside of her temple had looked at her like that, spoken to her like that…well, they wouldn’t even be afforded a headstone, put it that way. Gortash is civil to the butler because he has to be. The butler is under no such constraints. His eyes carve along the lines of Gortash’s bare chest as though nothing would please him more than to use that beak of a nose to slice the Banite open. Gortash doesn’t have a name to him. He is simply the Banite. 

“My little horror. Fel. Well met.” Gortash greets them from the foot of the stairs and yes, he knows how it incenses the butler to hear Dana referred to as his . It’s a large part of the reason he does it. The butler opens his mouth, no doubt to spit at the Banite, but-

“Be gone.” Dana’s voice is cold, but it's tired. She’s tired. She is wearing Gortash’s waistcoat from the day before, but no shirt beneath, and her tattooed shoulders are tense. 

“But Master-”

“Be gone. ” Dana repeats, and he is gone. She is left holding the skull of a tiefling, horns still intact. Her fingers move over its crown with a strange familiarity as she drifts towards the fireplace and begins to move things on the mantelpiece to make space for it. Gortash waits for a moment to ensure the butler’s departure before he moves towards Dana. The air around her is thick with emotions that are damn near visible they’re so strong. Anger. Sadness. The urge. Exhaustion above all else.

“Bad night,” It’s a statement, not a question. She can’t deny it. Gortash’s hands, clear of rings and gauntlets and supports, go to her shoulders and smooth down her arms, “You know I’d rather you wake me.” To stop her or to join her, it makes no difference to him. He wants to be there. She shudders under his hands, then pulls her entire self into her chest as though to get away from him,

“Don’t.” This is the only word she says, but it’s enough. Gortash lifts his hands and steps back. Dana’s head tips forward until her forehead smacks into her palm. The empty eye sockets of the tiefling skull stare into Gortash’s very soul over her hair. When she turns to him there is no red sheen to her eyes, just endlessly deep brown, but her skin is more pallid than usual. She didn’t sleep. She fought her demons alone all night. She’s bickering with the butler.

“Slayer, talk to me.”

“I can’t.”

“Then go upstairs and sleep. Don’t try and tell me you don’t need the rest.”

“Gortash, I’m executing Contingency Plan F.” Dana tells him, hugging her elbows. He knows what Contingency Plan F means. Of course he does, he knows all of their plans. This is one he never thought would be employed. He’d rather Plan D over F. Hells, even Plan N. Myrkul can always Choose another. But she’s prepared Plan F. She’s ready. A heavily stained travel pack rests against the chaise. Her coat. Her boots.

“Why?” It's all he can fathom saying. It doesn’t make sense. Everything had been going well. Everything had been brilliant. The plan is moving seamlessly, the three Chosen top-notch cogs in a meticulously maintained machine. Gortash and Dana have risen above and beyond their upbringings and the expectations held for them. They attend balls, press conferences, charity events. The Iron Throne has been rebuilt. The Steel Watch Foundry is complete. They have everything. They have each other. Lord Gortash. Mage Carmine, as she’s known to the public. They’re two of the most powerful people in the city and they revel in driving their heels into the place. They’ve worked so hard, for so long. They’re over the top of the hill, hand in hand.

“I was given fresh orders a tenday ago. I have not carried them out. This is unacceptable.”

“What orders? Who is the target?” He’s had no word of this from Bane. The three gods operate slightly differently, this is true, and each has an altered version of the agenda that their Chosen are following, but-

“You,” She’s telling the truth. He can see it in the infinitesimal wobble of her bottom lip, the split in it threatening to open again, “Every night I have slept with you this past week I have used every ounce of my strength, of my focus, to keep from squeezing every whisper of air from your lungs, from slicing into your stomach until you wear your intestines as anklets, from shoving the black bloody hand of Bane so far down your throat you shit it out the next morning-” these words are ripped from her quickly, the cadence rushed and high in an anticipatory tone he knows well, stopped by the hand she flattens across her lips only for her own mouth to betray her, to open and sink her teeth into the soft flesh of the webbing between her thumb and her index finger until blood is drawn and Gortash lurches forward to prevent her causing more harm to herself. This is how Orin speaks.

“Dana-”

“ Don’t touch.” She yanks her hand back. Her blood is already smeared on his fingers. This is worse than normal, much worse. Very rarely has she injured herself to prevent hurting someone else. Never, actually, now he thinks of it. Gortash has never seen her draw her own blood instead of spilling someone else’s. He’s never known her to use her own pain to satisfy the urge. To protect someone. Then again, he has only ever incidentally been the target of the urge.

“I don’t understand. Why would Bhaal order my death?” He asks. Dana’s panting like a cornered animal, her eyes darting for escape.

“I can’t-” her words stifle themselves and her head shakes and her eyes shut as though she’s fighting off a headache. She holds herself tighter and tighter and tighter. She’s going to leave bruises on her arms. Then she is still. Her eyes open. They shine red.

“Dana. Dana, don’t.” The warning is hardly out of his mouth before Bhaal’s Chosen launches herself at him. He hits the wooden back of the chaise at an odd angle, knocking it over and spiking pain in his back. It’s a mad scramble of hair-pulling and nails scraping and wild snarls. A hand cold and coated in ice pushes into his cheek and maddening whispers worm into his ears. Her spells are melting together, compounding as the inescapable aura of Bhaal and bloody murder lowers over him. He will not die here. He will not die at her hand. She will not give in. He’s never been scared of her before. He isn’t scared of her now, even as she manages to push him down onto the ground with her hands wrapped around his throat. She will shake this off. She has to. He starts to choke. 

Through faltering vision he sees her blink. Her features contort and a word squeaks from her, no. A break. Push-back. Something. Dana. It’s the best chance he has. He manages, somehow, to flip them so she’s pinned under his weight and one of her arms is trapped under his leg but the other…he doesn’t catch it in time. A shortsword of pure darkness grows from her fingertips. He knows this blade. It might be made of shadow, but it is still sharp. He’s watched her cleave through flesh and mind alike with it. As it slices the skin it tears into the brain. It has not cut him yet. Dana breathes out and it’s a painful-sounding rattle. Her arm trembles. She’s trying. Her eyes are still her own. He’s never seen this before. He’s never been scared of her before. He isn’t scared of her now. She’s more than this, more than mindless murder. He says her name. Her full name. A tear slides from the corner of her eye to the floor, not translucent and salty but thick and red. The shadows recede under her skin.

“ Because I love you,” her voice is still her own, thin and reedy and scared as it is. He has never known her to be frightened before. It’s an icepick in his very heart, so much so that his understanding of her words is delayed. She’s never said that before. Neither of them have. A second icepick, “Because I defy Him for you . The very flesh and blood and bone of Bhaal bends to mortal whim and he will not stand for it,” she’s crying now, sobbing, shaking in Gortash’s grip. Making no attempt to wriggle free from him or even stop him from restraining her other hand, “I did not think Bhaalspawn were capable of love. I did not think that we were more than harbingers. You…” her breath is quickening again, on the edge of hyperventilation, “You made me think I might have a soul. A heart. But I am not my own person, I never have been. I am Him, and He is me, and He wants you strung from Wyrm’s Rock by your entrails and He wants me to do it so that I know-” A wail stops her words and she pushes back against Gortash as best as she can, writhing until she is out from under him and she keeps moving away until she hits the wall opposite him.

“Dana-”

“Do not speak. I can only hold for so much longer,” Her breathing is still erratically rapid, but her eyes are her own. She’s resisting. She is actively defying her god, her father, the blood that runs in her veins. For Enver Gortash. Her body trembles with the effort of it as she rises to her feet. He wants to say something do something but he doesn’t know what. Everything has happened so fast, so shockingly that even he hasn’t been able to process it. He doesn’t even get the chance to think. She holds a cord in her hand, a cord she’d ripped from his neck without his noticing while they’d fought on the floor. A small, flat piece of iron hangs from it, “ Non movere.” 

Gortash is stuck. Glued to the floor by the fallen chaise that she’d been so fond of. She wouldn’t let him throw it out. Now it’s broken. They are broken. Words fight to escape his vocal cords. He can scarcely blink.  Now he can do nothing but stare at Dana as she calms her breathing. She has overcome the urge. For now.

“There is only one way to avoid your death. I must go to Ketheric. With Orin. Be under their watch at Moonrise. I must repent. I must atone. You cannot follow me. The Grand Design will proceed,” She retrieves her pack and her shoes, but her fingers are too shaky to tie the laces, “I’m sorry.” She’s going for the door, she’s leaving him, she’s forgotten her daggers. Leaving him alive despite Bhaal’s will. He has been spared not by the grace of any god but by her. His ally, his friend, his…everything of over a decade. He can’t even try to stop her. He can blink. He can speak. As she steps across the threshold, thin tracks of blood running down her face, he finds he can speak,

“I love you.”

Chapter Text

She has to wait until the dead of night before she can make a move. She has to plan around the night watch, the dog, the Flaming Fist patrols, the late-night patrons of the Elfsong. It feels more and more like a betrayal the more thought she puts into it. The worst part is when she has to wriggle out from under Wyll’s arm and he starts to mumble into the pillow he’s pressed his face into. He’s adapted to her night-time episodes all too well and wakes as she rolls away from him to sit up.

“Dana?” His fingers find the hem of her nightdress. She replaces the fabric with her own hand, an exchange he’s more than willing to take while he pushes up on his other hand into a sitting position. 

“I’m fine,” she tells him even as she stares through the gap of the curtains around their bed for an excuse, “I just wanted some water. Go back to sleep.” Dana turns her head to meet his gaze. Her eyes are clear, free of the crimson glaze that slides over them when the urge to kill is insurmountable. That’s the confirmation he needs to know that she is herself. His one functional eye is permanently red, demonic. It used to be brown. He said once that he’d had his mother’s eyes before he lost them to his pact. Now, his eyelids are heavy with sleep he hasn’t quite shaken off. Wyll lifts their joined hands to his lips and presses a kiss to Dana’s knuckles, split but no longer bloody, before he lets her go and rolls back onto his pillow. Dana slips off the bed, using the sound of her feet hitting the floor to disguise her actions of picking up her shoes and her pack before she steps through the curtains and closes them firmly behind her. The night watch has been more lax since the party had sequestered themselves in the Elfsong, and Halsin shirks the duty more than most. Dana can hear the sound of him scraping at a block of wood, carving another duck or bear or badger. This is her best chance to get out without anyone noticing. Still, she doesn’t put it past Jaheira to sleep with one eye open now, so Dana avoids her bed as she tiptoes towards the door.

A house in the Outer City is her destination. They had passed it on their way to Basilisk’s Gate. It had looked abandoned. Broken window on the second floor. And yet she was drawn to it. She hadn’t said anything to the others. What little memory had stirred at the sight of the building had kept her tongue still. Her feet know the way even if her brain doesn’t remember why. The Steel Watcher stationed at Basilisk’s Gate just…lets her through, even though she’s fairly certain the gates are supposed to be closed off at this time of night. She finds the house without difficulty. There can’t be anyone living there. It has the cold, stale air of a home with no life in it. That broken window is probably the easiest way to get in without attracting attention. The next-door neighbour has an apple tree in their goat yard.

She doesn’t really try to be quiet as she drops in through the window and meanders down the hall towards the stairs. There’s a long, thin table to her left with nothing on it. Shouldn’t there be paintings hung on the wall above? She pushes her palm along the wall until she reaches the stairs and descends. The end of the stairs takes her into a sitting room with clear passage to a kitchen. A fireplace sits cold and empty, the mantlepiece above full of trinkets. There are a couple of plain yet old armchairs, a broken chaise that hasn’t made it to the dump, a drinks trolley and little else. Little else but the person pouring himself a drink. The sight is familiar and brings a strange comfort that twists into acidic confusion when he turns. Gortash. Recently-lauded Archduke Gortash is here, in this tumbledown old house that Dana couldn’t stay away from, holding a cracked tumbler of whisky. A heavy pour, and by the looks of it he’s had several already. Does he? How does she know that? They’re stuck in silence for an uncomfortably long time. Neither one can get a read on the other besides Dana being monstrously confused and more than a little panicked. Gortash’s eyes scan over her, but they stick in odd places. On the dagger in her hand, the brand on her other palm, on the hag-eye. He speaks first,

“Dana,” Is it…relief? Relief? It’s suspicious is what it is. She lifts her knife higher and tries to cover her confusion with confidence, even though something fragile deep inside her that had been so close to breaking feels as though it has just been wrapped in purest cotton. When he steps forward, she steps back and up onto the stairs again. His expression falters, but she isn’t sure what it means, “You think I would hurt you?”

“Yes, I do.” He sold her friend to a devil, he’s using the father of her beloved as a meat puppet. The same beloved she’d left behind at the Elfsong to find this house. To find…him. Gortash doesn’t seem to even consider her as a threat. He’s just standing there, with no weapon and no defence. His eyes are still stuck on the dagger, but he doesn’t look at the weapon with any sort of concern. A wickedly curved thing she’d found under the Open Hand temple. It had felt like such a natural extension of her own self that she discarded her shortsword at the first opportunity.

“You truly remember nothing?”

“Very little.” Dana confirms. He’d asked a similar question at his coronation celebration, when he’d insisted on dancing with her. He hadn’t believed her then. Will he now?

“We have an agreement, and my word is my bond,” his hand goes to his chest, clutching at non-existent pearls. He’s still wearing the gauntlets that hold the netherstone, and his fingers are laden with rings. Gold runs through even his casual clothes. He drips with luxury in this house with the broken window, surrounded by secondhand furniture, “No harm will come to you by the hand of Bane.” These words. She knows these words. He’s said them to her before. She had replied with a mirror of his promise. Their hands had been linked. Bound, even. 

“Will you tell me the truth?” Dana asks. The dagger is back in its place in her belt before she can think about it. 

“I always have, slayer.”  He’s like quicksilver slipping through her fingers, a stubbornly silky ribbon refusing its knot. She can’t get a clear read on him, but she knows him. Knows him to his bones.

“What is this place?”

“A safe house. Somewhere private to conduct meetings.” Flippant. Casual. Nonchalant. Incorrect. They must have met here before. That must be why Dana knew the way. Right?

“Your name isn’t Gortash. It’s Flymm. Isn’t it?” Dana’s brow furrows with the effort of remembering. His expression falters again and this time she catches something horribly negative. His own history is off-limits, no matter how quickly he catches himself and turns back to the trolley.

“You're right. Of course, you’re very rarely wrong. A drink, Dana?” Glass and crystal clink together before she answers an affirmative. He will not hurt her. She will not hurt him. No one has to know. He comes back to her with another glass, distinctly un-cracked. Wyvern Whisky. She doesn’t think she’s ever had it before but somehow she knows what it is called.

“What is my…family name?” Dana asks. It’s a question that has burned in her mind since Wyll had asked it in the Shadowlands. She had a family once. A foster family. Vague memories of faces. Voices. Fistfuls of hair. Pools of blood. She had killed them.

“In public you used Carmine,” Gortash moves while he speaks. Dana moves in the opposite direction. They circle until he is by the stairs and she is by the fireplace, “The family who took you in when they found you on the street, they were Aldridge. You killed them when you were nine. When Bhaal came to collect his progeny.” He knows her. So well. Has known her. For so long. He is one of the largest blank spaces in her memory and she has only been able to colour it a single line at a time.

“How do you know that?”

“You told me. Years ago,” he sighs, and she can tell it’s tinged with exasperation, “If you will not take my word, I do have something I can show you. Proof.”

“Proof?” Gods, she feels pathetic. She doesn’t know what she’s doing, she doesn’t know why she’s here. She doesn’t understand why Gortash isn’t already dead. Why does she trust him implicitly, enough to go against the wishes of her dearest companions? Why does her chest ache when he turns and she sees the lines of his face in profile as if on a stamp? Why does her stomach flip the same way it does when Wyll laughs beside her and his fingers slip under the neck of her dress? Another headache looms large over the back of her skull.

“Proof that you are what your visions tell you. Proof that I am telling the truth.”

“Show me.” Dana decides. In the same moment, they both fling their heads and hands back to drain their glasses dry. Perfectly in sync. Gortash says nothing of it, simply retreats up the stairs. Dana follows. He takes her to the smallest room. There’s even less in here than there was downstairs. A mattress against the wall, though it looks to be in perfectly usable condition, and a chest. Magically sealed, opening only to his touch. He steps back once it is open. He gives her space. Dana kneels on the floor and stares down into the chest. It’s full of…things. Seemingly random. A linen chemise embroidered with ferns. Some books. Small bottles of embalming spices. Full to bursting with things that spark shreds of memory with every touch, but only shreds. Not enough to sew back together, “What is this?” Dana asks, turning to look at Gortash. This man, this stranger, who can’t be a stranger at all. Can he?

“I figured that if you ever came back, you would make good on your promise to finally flay me should I let Orin touch any of your personal possessions.” His answer doesn’t sit right with her. There’s something else, something deeper. That’s not the reason. He’s lying.

“Who am I to you?” Dana asks. Her head aches and her knees protest the hard floor and her heart strains to crawl out of her chest but the pain only doubles when she tries to push past the shadows that keep her locked out of her own mind, “Who are you to me?”

“Our gods lead us to one another, and we worked well together. We orchestrated the beginnings of the Grand Design here while the old general fostered the colony at Moonrise.” 

“What were we?”

“Allies. Nothing more.”