#like he knows what its like to lose a love. he fucked up. but dronia was just

[recitedemise]

Gale knows it intimately, the appeal in losing yourself in endless work. He's leafed some novels and tomes, has given fierce chase to words and theories, and as the night lumbered on in its lonesome hours, had burnt through both oil and candlewax. In his tower, he'd become the sole, grave portrait of a ravenous obsession. It had balmed him meagerly, anchoring his mental in the comfort of books, but imagine if he hadn't. Imagine if he'd thought. Imagine had he sat there in the shadows and the dark, his folly in his bones and his guilt on his conscience, every memory hollering. And every doubt in him loud. Madness, he'd wager. A treacherous insanity. Their party's now gathered by a half-cobbled hearth, and he'd have shattered apart like that window to a chapel. Temple glass, he humors. Or cathedral panes. 

Madness, they were spared.

But grief, they were not.

And as Gale gathers his belongings back into his bag, at least his, he knows, he wasn't made to ignore.

"Then by some stroke of luck, you'll be happy to know you're only expected to breathe. We can work up to laurel resting on another foul evening. For now, it would hardly kill you to do away with the semantics. That said, enough with the stalling," he urges. "And get on in."

Even here, the steam off the water clings along his neck. Gale works, hearing the rustling of clothes and the tell-tale ripple of her scalding dip. He clatters on about, back pointedly turned as all manner perfumes start waltzing in the air. However, even as he bumbles, vials click-clacking and stoppers popped in, it's yet the aching of her voice that lingers in his mind...and darkly, somberly, her still-veiled past.

Truthfully, he'd be one hell of a liar to even try at disinterest. Call it the scholar in him, but he boasts an unstoppable, unstemmable, and restless curiosity. Yet, far more than that by both seas and oceans is his unwithering fondness for this tight-lipped soul. It was not at all foreseen, this boldening camaraderie in a new-found friend. But, well, Gale himself is a lover, a man with both warmth and an unstoppable heart, and to hear her story would let him act as her pillar -- her bastion in the fury and tumultuous rain. He can see them still, the flash-crack-bang of that horrendous night. Gods, he had felt like her. There was viscera in his gums. But worse than that, he discerns, were the feelings that surfaced as the adrenaline waned. Hells, that heart-wrenching ache and that filleting regret...

The face of her sire. He recalls that, too.

Nightmarish, Gale thinks. Too haunting and soulless. He startles, tying up his pouch as Dronia's voice stirs like the canopies high up above. Blinking, he hadn't even realized he had held his breath. Oh. "I see," he begins, timbre so unbearably soft. "For what it's worth, I could hardly name a man more fortunate to have held your affections. Even with a thousand years, there'd have never been enough time to enjoy it by your side. Every second spent would have been another second desired." ...still, Gale well knows, he should have had more of it. More and more by several decades! Decades aplenty and tens of springs. Breathing, Gale gathers his words, lingering by the bramble where the rest of their companions are chattering in view. He knows his loves, had kissed and yearned and lost as she had. They'd hardly the same story, her grief a misfortune where he'd been a fool, but to know so keenly that your lover's escaped you... A wedding, she'd said. They could have been wed. Gale frowns, that spawn's red eyes again stark in his memory. He thinks of rubies, garnets, and disastrous greed "Well, you're not exactly a charity as far as I'm concerned. He won't take from you again, and I won't stand here and allow you to suffer a thief. For as much as you've lost, I'd hope you know you aren't fumbling alone. Should he ever find you again, we'll make that painfully clear." It's a daunting prospect, surely, to risk the life of her companions to Alden again--but then, what of it, he'd ask? He's not a man to just bolt. They've all their journeys, every one of them dangerous, and for better or for worse, she's Gale to the most disastrous of ends. Huffing, Gale summons a mage hand and nudges forward.

"It is lavender," he tuts, the spectral thing holding his pouch for her. "Though should you have a hankering for something else, feel free to peruse. Admittedly, I'm finding myself tempted to get in there myself. Waste anymore time, and I'll beat you to it. Otherwise, I'm sure shoving you in with thunderwave would do you wonders."

She thinks the worst of it is that she's never even allowed herself the chance to grieve. When her parents died of illness, there was time to process it, she went back to work almost immediately, but she allowed herself the grace to grieve, to break down and cry. But when Caius died, when every family and neighbor she had grown up with, when all the rest of her adventuring party, had been brutally and viciously killed, she had no chance to grieve. She had nothing but Jalen's kindness and a mission to avenge them. But not grief, not the time to properly grieve. She carried their names in her heart like a makeshift graveyard, their souls weighing down mighty shoulders enough that sometimes even her drawing arm trembles. And even if her turning didn't fully kick in until they were in these Shadow Cursed Lands, she had felt a wrongness in her since she woke that morning among the wreckage.

Only now did she have a name for it.

Everyone here carried something with them, they were all doomed in some awful way, weren't they? It couldn't have just been fate that they all converged. They had to become each others' strength. A shoulder to lean on when they could no longer stand. And while all of them had different struggles, there was overlap. Astarion and Gale both understood her hunger in their own ways, in a strange way, it is nice not to be alone in that, even if she wouldn't wish it on anyone.

They were all in this together.

"I know, I know, but please, I would never try to insult you on purpose. It's not in my nature." She barely even had an insult to throw at their enemies. Threats, sure, but not insults. She was no bard, she would save the witty insults for her funnier friends. Astarion and Karlach seemed quite good at it. Shadowheart as well. Her eyes wander the camp, maybe out of fear that they were talking about her, about her fall from grace. And yet none seem afraid of her, more worried than anything. And yet sharp as her senses now be, she can't quite focus on anything they're saying, a din of voices muddling together to an incomprehensible clutter of noise. "I have to. It's all I know, Gale. I've rarely rested on my laurels. Especially now, especially with so much at stake." But he's read her like some dusty old tome. He's right. She will work herself to the bone and then down to the marrow until she can go no deeper. Anything to get away from her own problems.

Maybe she's a coward when it comes to reflecting on herself. Dealing with everyone else's problems is easier, she can remove herself from her own problems until they are distant thoughts. And yet, every so often her problems force their way to the surface, the visages of death dancing behind her eyelids whenever she closed them, sinking their fangs into her throat and tearing until the entire thing is in shreds. One day, perhaps she will reveal the full extent of the story, beyond the horrific visions. All everyone knew of her previously was the quaint life she lived out in the countryside, learning to hunt alongside her father, a life truly lived off the land in a quiet village. Something so painfully normal and modest. Were a bard recalling their tales at the beginning, little mind would be paid to her story, she suspects. Never mind that her family were known for centuries to be some of the most renowned spider hunters in Faerun. But they all had something remarkable about them, after all. They were all survivors of something, bound together in their turmoil. "Good. I don't think I could bear to part with any of you any time soon." There is a dread in knowing that by the time this is over, she may not see most of them for some time, if ever again.

As Dronia eyes the heated bath, she removes her leather armor until she is in something far more suited for the warm bath, something far less likely to shrink under the heat. "One day, maybe I will. I haven't allowed myself a chance to grieve, no sooner did I reach the city was I thrown into all this, I've been so busy trying to make sure we survive that..." She draws in a deep breath, her voice shaking, "I didn't keep all my heart though. Part of it died that night. The man you saw... his name was Caius, he was my fiance. We were to be wed two weeks after that night. I would..." she doesn't finish the thought. She's here now, nothing would ever bring him back, her mind flits back to Mayrina and how when they got the wand and she asked her to bring Connor back, she excused herself. It was too much, the first crack showing. She snaps herself back to the present. "You're too kind to me, Gale." The scents of the oils and soaps manage to override the blood that still clung so stubbornly to her face. "Do I smell lavender in there?"