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Tav pulled Astarion aside once the party had calmed slightly from the frantic panic of Orin’s sudden appearance, the horror of Yenna’s kidnapping.
“We need more information,” he said softly, careful that no one overheard him. That Karlach didn’t overhear him. “I need more information. On Orin, on this whole plot, on… on me.”
Astarion’s eyes widened, and then narrowed. “Tell me you’re not going to say what I think you’re going to say.”
“I have to talk to En– to Gortash. I… I need to know.”
“You already know I’m going to tell you this is a terrible idea,” Astarion said. “You can’t trust a man like him to tell you the truth, darling, you must know that.”
“Even if he’s lying, at least I’ll know what sort of lies he thinks would be convincing to me,” Tav said. He shuddered, then. “It… him and Orin. They’re… they’re the only ones who remember… me. What I used to be, before… whatever happened. And it isn’t like my sister will tell me anything between attempts on my life, so… I have to know. I have to– I have to try.”
“And what happens if you learn something you don’t like?” Astarion asked. “You were… yesterday…”
Tav shuddered again. Yesterday had been… bad. “I’m not– I won’t do that again. I’m not going to– especially if Yenna’s safety is dependent on me fighting Orin, I can’t– I won’t do anything dumb. But… I have to try, Astarion.”
Astarion tilted his head, his lovely lips pursed in a frown. “Your mind is made up. Why are you telling me about this?”
“So that you know. Where I’m going, and… what happened, if I…”
“You are not allowed to not come back,” Astarion snapped, grabbing Tav’s arm nearly hard enough to hurt. “Understand? I’ll see you in a couple of hours. Don’t you dare do something reckless enough that you won’t come back.”
“I– okay,” Tav breathed. “Okay. I’ll see you in a bit, Astarion.”
Astarion stared down at him for a moment longer, then softened, his grip on Tav’s arm loosening, his free hand coming up to cup Tav’s cheek, to draw him into a kiss.
Tav leaned into it, letting the gentle press of Astarion’s lips on his banish all other thought from his mind, just for a moment.
When Astarion drew back, he pressed his forehead to Tav’s instead, whispering into the air between them. “Don’t let him take you from me.”
“I won’t,” Tav said immediately. “I’m yours. I promise.”
Astarion snorted, drawing back all the way. “I didn’t mean it like that, though I’m glad to hear it nonetheless. Please be careful, darling.”
“I will,” Tav said. “I–” love you love you love you “–I’ll see you soon.”
“Yes,” Astarion said firmly, “you will.”
He kissed Tav one more time.
Then Tav slipped off, into the bustle of night in Baldur’s Gate.
There was an eerie sense of familiarity as Tav slid into the window of the strangely-palatial office at the top of Wyrm’s Rock fortress. It was a feeling that had been hounding him more and more the closer he got to Baldur’s Gate. One that had been near-overwhelming at the sight of Lord Enver Gortash yesterday.
He didn’t remember, exactly. But there were flashes. Images. Illithid rune-slates and ancient vellum, blueprints and maps, late nights and blood painted in an all too familiar pattern and black eyes gleaming at him.
The scent of rosewood and vanilla and smokepowder and engine oil, calloused hands catching on scars, lips pressed against his own.
Tav landed silently on the stone floor, and immediately felt as dozens of blood-hungry metal gazes trained on him, all of Gortash’s traps activating at the presence of an intruder.
“I see your time away hasn’t changed that habit of yours,” Gortash said. He was sitting at a heavy wooden desk, writing something by lamplight, still wearing what looked like the same ornate robes and glittering gauntlets he’d worn during the inauguration. He didn’t even get up, didn’t turn around, barely acknowledged Tav at all, even as Tav straightened up, his hands flitting to his daggers and his Urge flaring at having so many metal monsters threatening him.
“You– you knew me,” Tav said, the desperation for answers and the burning need to find them, whatever the cost, faltering now that he was actually face to face with Gortash once more. “How?”
“I already told you,” Gortash said, turning in his chair to eye Tav imperiously.
“Not everything.”
“My dear, if I told you everything about our past partnership, we would be here for hours.”
“How long?” Tav asked, taking a hesitant step closer, despite the traps lining the room.
Gortash, however, seemed entirely unbothered. “How long would we be here? I can hardly count it out to the minute.”
Tav growled in frustration. “No. How long did we know each other? How long were we…?”
Partners. That word felt… there was something about it. Some hint, in the way Gortash had looked at him, the familiarity of his greeting, of his pet names, the way Tav knew how the man’s lips would feel against his.
Gods, he hated it.
“Five years,” Gortash said softly. “We spent five years working together. Conspiring. Planning.”
He finally stood from his desk, crossing the room to stand in front of Tav, close enough that the scant few inches of difference between their heights suddenly felt mountainous. The traps whirred softly as he did, turning off. The sound only made Tav feel more uneasy.
“And how long was I gone?” Tav asked, his voice quieter than he’d meant it to be.
“Nearly a year.”
A year. Tav had woken up on the nautiloid about two months ago. How long had he spent in Kressa’s clutches? In Orin’s? How long had they toyed with him, used him? What else had they taken from him?
Was there anything at all of him left?
“And it clearly has not been a kind year to you,” Gortash said softly, and Tav blinked, focusing on the tyrant once more as Gortash looked him over, taking in his mismatched eyes, the new illithid veins covering his cheeks, the scars on his face. Tav had no idea how many of said scars Gortash knew already. He didn’t know how many were courtesy of his sister or his rescuer-turned-tormentor.
One of those gauntleted hands came up, clawed fingers ghosting over Tav’s cheek, and he jerked back, his breath catching in his throat.
Gortash didn’t seem at all put off by his reaction. He just stared at Tav, that same inscrutable expression in his black eyes.
“I– I shouldn’t have come here,” Tav said, backing away further. “This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have–”
“Come, now, you’re a clever man,” Gortash said. “If it was such a mistake for you to come here, you wouldn’t have done so.”
Tav bristled at the flattery. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Reassure my most trustworthy ally?” Gortash tilted his head. “I presume you are here in part because you saw sense, and decided to formalise our alliance.”
“I– I need to know. What I was. What I’ve done. It– I woke up barely even knowing my own name, I could hardly walk for the first few days, I– and every new thing I learn is worse than the last.” Tav cut himself off sharply. It was stupid, to the point of absurdity, to be laying out his vulnerabilities like this in front of this man. Despite all his talk, their alliance had clearly meant little enough to them that he hadn’t even noticed Tav lying helpless and broken beneath his feet for nearly a fucking year.
There was… something, in Gortash’s eyes. He was a difficult man to read, but…
“I am hardly surprised that you had trouble recalling your name,” Gortash said. His voice was so… soft. “You seemed to avoid using it, when you could.”
Tav blinked. “I… what?”
“I hardly knew all the details, of course,” Gortash said. “But it took you over a year to tell me your name at all, rather than your titles, and the first time I tried to use it to introduce you to one of my contacts, you nearly slit my throat. I got the sense it was something to do with your Lord’s orders; few things could drive you to violence quite as quickly as the notion that you were disobeying him.”
Well, wasn’t that a horrifying thought.
“What… I don’t even know if the name I’m using is my real one,” Tav admitted. “What– what was it? What you knew me by? What–?”
“Tavian,” Gortash said. “Though you often went by Tav.”
Tavian.
Memories flooded through Tav’s– Tavian’s– head, disjointed and disorienting, a mess of confused emotions and images, the scent of blood and cold streets and tiny, wirey arms wrapped tight around him and the echoes of a melody Tav barely remembered, one he had taken to humming to himself to drown out the Urges when they grew too loud to handle.
A hand landed on Tav’s arm, hot skin and cold metal, bracing him against the echoing racket of his aching head.
When Tav finally managed to refocus on Gortash’s face, the tyrant was closer than he had been. Tav was also sitting, perched on the edge of Gortash’s bed, with Gortash sat beside him, close enough that he could feel the man’s body heat radiating through his ornate robes.
Tav jerked his arm free, and Gortash let him go.
“You remain as reluctant to accept care as you ever were,” Gortash said. “You are very much still the man I knew, memory loss or not.”
“You don’t know me,” Tav snapped, standing up sharply and blinking back the wave of dizziness that accompanied the motion.
“Do I not?” Gortash asked, standing as well. “Is that not why you came here? I cannot imagine that Orin would be willing to tell you more about your past, and you are not someone who can let a mystery like yours lie unsolved.”
Gods, Tav fucking hated that he was right.
“What… were we?” Tav breathed. “For you to know me. I don’t– it feels like– like smoke, so close but disappearing between my fingers every time I try to reach for the memory, I…”
“Ah,” Gortash said. “I see your fondness for metaphor is another thing you haven’t lost.”
“Don’t play fucking games with me,” Tav snapped. Not about this. Gods, please, not about this.
“I wouldn’t dare,” Gortash said, with the same odd earnestness he’d had yesterday, when he’d offered Tav an alliance. “We were more than allies, yes. We shared a bed, as I’m sure you have more than deduced by now.” Gortash sighed. “I… am not a man who trusts easily. But you… I trusted you. I cared for you. I still do.”
Tav shuddered, fighting the impulse to wrap his arms around himself, to run away, to hide from that piercing black gaze. “Why didn’t you look?”
Gortash blinked. “What?”
“I was underneath Moonrise. The whole time. One of Thorm’s necromancers found me bleeding out, and she– she kept me like a toy for, apparently, almost a fucking year. You were there. I saw your notes. You– you were so close, if you actually fucking cared why didn’t you look?”
Gortash’s dark eyes had gone wide, his mouth falling slightly open.
He really hadn’t known. Tav had been sure he knew, just like Ketheric and Orin, that he had just chosen to ignore Tav’s horrid half-survival for his own goals. But he… he actually hadn’t known.
Which meant, of course, that he’d never even tried to find out.
“I assumed Orin had killed you,” Gortash breathed. “Your kind is rather known for fratricide, and your Lord isn’t one to reward the foolishness of leaving one’s rivals alive. By the time I knew enough about Orin that I might have questioned that assumption, I was rather preoccupied by surviving her myself.”
“So you never even checked.”
“Again, I don’t think my initial assumption was unreasonable. If your positions had been reversed, you would never have left Orin alive.”
“I left her alive for… for… gods, I don’t even know how old she is. How long we knew each other.”
“So far as I can tell, Orin is around twenty-six,” Gortash said.
Tav blinked. “Do you… do you know how old I am?”
“I’m afraid not,” Gortash said. “The way you spoke of her, on the rare occasions that you did, it seemed as though Orin was younger than you, but I never learned by how much.”
Tav shivered. “I… why are you telling me this? Why are you telling me any of this?”
Gortash took a step closer. Slow. Careful. Tav couldn’t read the expression in his face. He didn't know what he was hoping to see.
“I’ve already told you,” Gortash said. “I want to renew our alliance. Renew our partnership.”
“You want to fuck me again.”
Gortash laughed. “I won’t deny it. But that’s hardly all I want.”
“And if I don’t want that?”
Gortash tilted his head. He was so godsdamned close. “You’d be lying.”
Tav bristled. “Would I? You sold the kindest woman I’ve ever met to a fucking devil. You’re planning to enslave millions of people. You’ve killed and tortured and hurt so many, you– what you did to Karlach… you’re a monster.”
“You are the true Chosen of the Lord of Murder,” Gortash said. “You are as much a monster as I am. We were good together, Tav. Let me show you.”
He stepped closer. Took Tav’s face in his gauntleted hand.
Brought their lips together.
Tav gasped as memories flooded him, overwhelming and nearly painful in their intensity, and Gortash immediately took his distraction as an opportunity to deepen the kiss, sliding his tongue into Tav’s mouth with the utmost confidence, positive of his welcome.
Tav remembered hundreds of kisses just like this one. The way Gortash’s– Enver’s– blood tasted, as Tav bit down hard on his shoulder. The feel of his hands smoothing up Tav’s thighs. Pleasure and pain, intertwined so tightly it was impossible to tell the difference. The scents of rosewood and vanilla, smokepowder and engine oil.
A bleeding gash on Tav’s back, taken from a merregon’s halberd in Cania, when he’d leapt in front of its blade instinctively to keep it from Enver’s flesh. The warmth of Enver’s burly arms, wrapped tightly, possessively around him. The relief of finding one single, solitary person too valuable to Bhaal’s ambitions for the Urges to call for his blood.
A simple, uncomplicated kiss, gentle and almost sweet in a way that neither of them was ever supposed to be, and the horror and pain and humiliation of the punishment his Father had given him afterwards.
Tav had wondered, in a distant sort of way, whether he’d ever loved before Astarion. Now he knew, and the answer made him sick to his stomach.
He shoved Enver away, stumbling back, out of reach.
Enver let him go, eventually. His eyes were just as calculating, his face just as unreadable, as they had been before the kiss.
“No,” Tav said. “No, I– whatever we had before, the person I was before– I can’t go back. I won’t go back. I’m going to stop this. I’m going to kill you, Enver.”
“You have said that to me before,” Enver said. “It was not any more convincing then than it is now.”
Tav wanted to scream, to kiss Enver again, to tear his tongue out. He wanted to run away, to never think about this wretched man again.
“Why?” he asked instead, his voice barely above a whisper.
Enver frowned. “You will need to be more specific than that, I’m afraid, dearest. If you’re asking why you threatened to kill me previously–”
“No,” Tav interrupted. “Karlach. Why did you do it? She trusted you. She cared about you.” I cared about you. I still do. Please tell me it wasn’t in vain.
Enver–
Enver laughed.
“She was convenient,” he said. “Physically strong, but gullible and naive. And it was her sacrifice which made my Steel Watch possible. You used to understand that such things were sometimes necessary.”
“Her sacrifice?” Tav demanded, aghast. “You sold her to a devil. You tore her heart out. And for the fucking Steel Watch? Those metal monstrosities, those– those blasted things you didn’t even build, you had some Gondians do it for you and you just took the–”
Tav’s words were cut off sharply by the hard crack of metal against flesh and a bright flare of pain.
He staggered to the side, blood filling his mouth and his hand flying to his cheek.
Enver had backhanded him. As Tav looked back up at him, he flexed his hand once, letting it fall back down to his side. Finally, his face was readable– a cold, vicious fury was writ across it.
Tav stared at Enver for a long, silent moment. Enver stared back. The city itself seemed to hold its breath.
Then Tav sighed, shaking his head. “I wanted to be wrong. I wanted– I hoped– but you really are just like me, aren’t you? Broken. Ruined. Unforgivable.”
Enver scoffed. “What need have men like us for such paltry things as forgiveness?”
Another memory, then. Not a forgotten one from his past. One from just yesterday. The warmth of Karlach’s body as she hugged him, squeezing almost tight enough to hurt. As she demanded that Tav stay alive. As she came to terms with his past, with his entanglement with this exact man, and forgave him for it.
Tav didn’t usually like to be touched. It made his skin crawl, his Urge scream, every fibre of his being strain to end the life of whoever dared to lay their hands on him. But he couldn’t get the warmth of Karlach’s body, the strength of her arms, the kindness that underlaid her entire being, out of his head.
“I’m probably not going to kill you,” Tav acknowledged softly, backing away from Enver. “But I am going to help Karlach kill you. For everything you did to her. For everything you did to this city. People like us don’t get happy endings, Enver. That’s the thing that brings plans like ours down in the end. The world isn’t made for monsters like us to win.”
“You have never been one to be held back by nonsense like fate,” Enver said. “Why begin now? You used to be so much more independent.”
Tav laughed, bitter and strained. “So you didn’t know me much, at all. I was a slave, Enver. I still am. Unable to disobey. Beholden to my Father entirely. This–” he gestured to himself, scarred and broken, twisted and changed and warped almost beyond recognition– “is the closest I have ever come to being independent of him, and I still… you never wanted an equal. You wanted a toy you couldn’t break. You didn’t break me, Enver. Bhaal did, long before we ever met. And now we’ll both pay the price for it.”
“Don’t be foolish,” Enver snapped. His voice still seemed cold, collected, unbothered, but there was something in the crease of his mouth, in the tension in his hands… he was afraid.
Afraid of Tav? Or afraid of losing him?
Tav supposed it didn’t really matter.
“Even if you do kill Orin after the havoc she wrought upon you, your motley little collection of strays cannot hope to take down my Steel Watch. You certainly cannot hope to take control of the Brain again without my aide. You are throwing away certain victory for the sorts of morals and principles that only ever result in pain. You used to be smarter than this, Tavian.”
Tav turned away, walking towards the window.
“You must know I cannot let this threat go unacknowledged,” Enver added. “If you leave now, my Steel Watch will hunt you down. I will find you. Struggle and fight all you like; I tamed you once before, and I can do it again.”
“Tamed me,” Tav repeated, glancing over his shoulder. A thought occurred to him, then. “You know, you sound almost like this stupid devil who’s been following me around. Raphael. I think you two would get along, if you met.”
Enver’s eyes went wide. His mouth fell open. He took a half step back.
It was the largest crack in his facade that Tav could remember ever seeing in him, before the tadpole or since.
Tav turned away from the shock on Enver’s face, hating that uncomfortable feeling of knowing he should remember something but being unable to.
“Tavian…” Enver said softly.
“I loved you,” Tav said. “Before. I belonged to my Father, but… I defied him for you. I was never yours. And I definitely won’t be anymore. But… I wanted to be, so badly.”
When he glanced back over his shoulder, Enver’s face had become unreadable again.
“You told me that once before,” Enver said. “The night you vanished.” He took a step closer. Slowly. Carefully. Like Tav really was an animal to be tamed, as likely to bite as to submit. “Come back. We can rule together as kings. As gods. The Black Hand and the Prince of Murder, as it was meant to be. This plot was ours, yours and mine. We can carry it out still.”
“And if I don’t want to be what my Father made me? If I want to do better? If I want to try and make something, anything right?”
“You were never a fool before. Your parentage is what gives you the power you possess. Throwing it away in some fit of childish pique, in some spat of morals–” he spat the word out like a curse “–thrust upon you by Karlach and Ravengard’s brat does no one any good.”
And at that, Tav’s last little bit of hesitation died away.
He spun around again, fury flaring in his chest– not the blind, animal fury of the Urge, but an emotion that was all his own, a white-hot, protective rage that flared at every mention of Cazador, every time Mizora showed her smug face, whenever Shadowheart mentioned the Mother Superior or Lae’zel talked about Vlaakith or Gale mentioned Mystra.
Whenever Karlach spoke about Gortash. The man who had sold her to a devil. The reason Tav’s best friend was dying a slow, agonising death.
The man– the monster– who stood before him now.
“You are going to die, Enver Gortash,” Tav said, the fury cold and pounding, mixing with his Urge now and making it scream for blood. “My best fucking friend is going to kill you for everything you did to her. And I’m going to help.” He growled in frustration, turning to the window. “I hoped… I don’t know what I hoped. That you would see sense. That you would be even a little bit sorry. But you’re not. And it doesn’t matter how much I loved you. You have never loved anyone.”
“You are a weak, sentimental fool,” Gortash snapped. “Perhaps it would have been better if Orin had killed you. Then you never would have become this wreck, this ruined shadow of your former glory.”
“The next time I see you, you’re going to die. And you’ll never hurt anyone else, ever again.” Tav glanced back over his shoulder. Gortash’s eyes were cold, his mouth twisted in a scowl.
The quiet darkness of night. Enver’s arms around him. Warmth. Comfort. The only night undisturbed by nightmares or Urges that Tav had ever known.
“In another world,” Tav breathed, “in another life, where both of us were completely different… I wonder what could have been.”
Then he slipped out of the window and into the darkness of night, leaving Enver Gortash behind, once and for all.