A little extra something for the you in every universe by @marigoldbaker , Jaheira and Thea!! They're absolutely cute, and they deserve to be happy after all the shit that's happened!!!
soooooooo i was thinking about thea/jaheira in the 'verse of the marigold/rolan fic, and have alluded a lot in the first draft to Something existing between them, and realized tonight what that something was! i'm not posting this to ao3 yet -- i wanna wait till the wizard fic goes up -- so if you read this, i love you, you're ever so special to me and this is a special tumblr treat many months before the main course <3
if you want a summary: thea and jaheira meet like 30 years before canon, have a critically emotional one-night stand that kind of changes both of them fundamentally. a little spicy. ok enjoy.
Harpers, while often frustratingly prone to breaking off and meddling on their own when it came to handling a problem, were still all bound together by a creed, a code, a set of beliefs—easy to negotiate with if, as High Harper, one appealed to their sense of morality. Hired swords answered only to coin. Jaheira found the former preferable (if moderately more annoying), and the latter, after a tenday and change of working at a particularly thorny problem, immensely exhausting. The plan had been an artful little smash-and-grab, requiring one crew for one day—but then her first crew had gotten themselves arrested, and her second crew hadn’t been prepared for the increased security, and really, the lack of communication in this part of the city when it came to Harper operations made it very clear that Jaheira had her work cut out for her in Baldur’s Gate.
She always hated being back here. The city smelled of sewer-rot and filth—the natural by-product of overcrowding on land that should have been allowed to grow wild. In her younger days, that hatred had burned almost too hot to bear—but she had had a lover there to cool her, a gentle balm to soothe her. She could no longer afford to lose herself in a fit of pique when there was no one and nothing to calm her back into clearheadedness.
“Drinking alone?”
Already irritated, Jaheira looked up. One of the hired swords appeared to have taken some sort of interest in her, and she had absolutely no interest in encouraging this. “Yes,” she said curtly.
The woman, frustratingly, did not seem affronted by Jaheira’s cold dismissal. She sat down, swinging her legs up onto the barstool, and knocked on the counter. “Barkeep?” she called. “Get me something cheap. I’m not a woman of any taste.” With that, she turned to Jaheira, grinned broadly, and said, “How’s it going?”
Irritation gave way to a bubble of hysterical amusement. Jaheira pressed her fingers to her mouth, trying in vain to force down a laugh. “Is that the line you are trying to use on me?”
The woman blinked curiously up at her. “Gods, no. I’m two months off losing the love of my life. You’re pretty, and you look like you’ve got enough sense to know this team I’m on is shit. I think we should have a drink together.” She drummed her fingers on the counter. “Don’t read into it.”
Instinct told Jaheira that the woman was interested. Harper paranoia suspected that the woman was trying to get under her skin. She would keep her cards close to her chest.
“You would disparage your own team to the woman who hired them?”
“Not my team,” the woman firmly corrected. “The team I’m on. I’m a battle cleric. I go where I’m needed. Whatever you pay me goes—well, time was it’d go to my lady, but now I s’pose it goes to the rest of my team. I’ve got enough to live off. No need for extra.”
Jaheira had no idea what to make of this. “And what makes you so sure you are needed here?”
The woman’s eyes—soft and brown, ringed with gold—flashed quickly up to Jaheira’s, taking her in with an uncomfortable level of scrutiny. It didn’t feel as flirtatious as Jaheira had expected—rather, it felt like open curiosity.
“They’re shit at their job,” she said. “They’re not getting paid. They don’t have morals, and they don’t remember why morals are important. What you’re doing right now is going to make the city better. You’ve hired them to do something that matters, and I’m here because I believe in that, giving them my share of the coin so that they get a bit extra. Might be they shrug it off as just another job, but I’m planting a seed. Letting them do something where they don’t have to close their eyes to what they’ve become for the sake of a bit of coin.”
Now Jaheira really was intrigued. She hadn’t taken any notice of the woman when she’d hired the crew. The leader—a hulking, sullen half-orc—had been the one to respond to her notice, taking the payment without a single clarifying question. She’d scanned the small group behind him, but this woman—dwarven, muscular, scarred—had seemed quiet and dull, fading into the background behind malicious brutality. This was apparently not the case.
“Who are you?”
“Oh, you know.” The woman waved a hand. “Got a bit of a name here and there, but what does that matter? I’m Thea.”
“Thea,” Jaheira slowly repeated.
“Althea, if you’re being formal.”
Jaheira nodded slowly, turning the name over. Althea sounded distantly familiar. She would have to look into it in her own time.
“Two months off losing the love of your life?”
Thea smiled a bit uncomfortably. “Didn’t mean to say it that fast. Only—” She fidgeted. “I worry I’ll come on a bit strong if I’m not careful. You’re dearly pretty and I lose the run of myself around a woman like you.”
“Oh?”
“Didn’t want you to think I was—trying,” said Thea clumsily. “Mostly just wanted to talk to you. Like I said, I think we should have a drink together. Doesn’t have to be more than that.”
Something was thrumming under Jaheira’s skin. It had been one thing to tersely turn down admirers after Khalid’s death—she had been young, she had been grieving, she had felt any advance to be deeply, cruelly inappropriate, only interested in a pretty face and a well-maintained physique. The times had changed significantly. Most who courted her favor with flirtation did not know who she was, and those who did know who she was had enough sense not to risk the wrath of High Harper Jaheira, Hero of Baldur’s Gate.
So often she felt more a figurehead than a person. And it had been so long since she had been reckless and ridiculous.
“And if—” She cleared her throat, uncomfortably aware of her lack of suavity. Ye gods, it had been so long since she had tried anything like this! “And if I wanted it to be more than that?”
Thea’s eyebrows shot up. Almost nervously, she said, “Respectfully, saer, I—I don’t think it’d be proper.”
“Proper?” said Jaheira. “Did you not just—you called me—”
“It’s a fact,” said Thea, as though this should have been obvious. “Sky’s blue, water’s wet, you’re a pretty girl of substance.”
“I don’t think anyone has called me a girl in over a century,” said Jaheira, impressed despite herself. “Primarily because I might have killed them, had they tried.”
“How old are you, ninety?” Thea squinted. “Can never tell with you elves.”
“Half,” said Jaheira. “And I am one hundred and thirty years old. Hardly young.”
“I’ve got near a hundred years on that. You’re a pretty girl and I’ll hear nothing else.”
“You have called me pretty four times since sitting down, and you have no interest in bedding me?”
“The—” Thea let out a frustrated breath. “I pull a girl in and I have her for the night. That’s all. We’re working together.”
“You do not think me capable of compartmentalizing?”
Thea flushed. “Why?”
Jaheira hesitated, stiffening. She wasn’t entirely sure of the answer herself.
“You asked,” she finally said. “Not directly, but…or perhaps I am interested. I don’t know. I have been…it has been so long since I’ve done anything like this.”
Some of the defensive tension seemed to leave Thea as she studied Jaheira’s expression. “And when was the last time you did it, then?”
“I…” Jaheira tilted her head back. Perhaps this strange and flickering desire for more had propelled her to explore some new avenues, but there was no world where she would ever speak of Khalid to someone she did not know well enough to trust.
“I was in love,” she said, distantly. “As you were. And now…” She trailed off. “Decades. Perhaps a century. I—”
“Oh, well, fuck that, then,” said Thea, placing a hand over Jaheira’s.
Jaheira jerked to attention. “Excuse me?”
“You should have led with that,” said Thea, eyes alight with—not sympathy, but relief. Jaheira stared. “If it’s been that long, you need at least one good tumble to…I don’t know, take the edge off the heartbreak. Lose yourself in something that’s nothing, make it everything. Might not be able to help with a bit of a flirt, but I can help with a thing like that.”
“Are you needed here, then?” said Jaheira sardonically.
Thea’s eyes dipped with purpose to her mouth.
“Am I?”
Abruptly, they felt far too exposed. Jaheira pulled her hand back. Just as Thea’s face was beginning to nervously shutter, she said, quietly, “Second floor. First door to the right. Follow me without making it look subtle,” and removed herself from the bar, heart pounding in her chest.
+
Thea met her all of five minutes later. Irritatingly unsubtle, this woman, but there was something charming about that—the absence of artifice. Authenticity. A rare thing in a world like the one they lived in. Jaheira could never love a woman like this—loving, giving, good. She knew what losing a sweet and true lover did to a body, and she would not live through it again.
But she could taste it. For a night, she could pretend—remember—
Thea’s hands on her were practiced, patient, gentle, as if she’d been in this tavern, this room, a thousand times before. Jaheira felt a twinge of irrational jealousy. This was an important night for her. Would it mean anything to Thea, later, what Jaheira had given to her with the sort of careless trust that got people killed? Was that even a fair thing to expect of a stranger, when a stranger’s touch was what she’d wanted in the first place?
And then Thea kissed her, just under her ear, and Jaheira’s thoughts slid sideways.
Her mouth was soft. When had another person last touched her like this? Jaheira fell into the pillows, overwhelmed, and Thea moved to straddle her waist, leaning down to kiss her properly. The kiss was nothing like Khalid—yet the tenderness, the warmth—
“Oh, love,” said Thea softly, and broke the kiss, pressing her forehead to Jaheira’s. Something surged up in Jaheira’s chest, wild and untamed. “It’s all right.”
It was not ever going to be all right again.
“I know.”
How could she know?
Thea took Jaheira’s curled hand, brought the fingers across her scarred throat. Her eyes stayed intently on Jaheira’s. “We’ve all got scars from a love or another,” she said. “Mine’s here. See it? I’d imagine yours cut a bit deeper. A good love. A long love.”
Jaheira’s fingers traced the scar, and she wondered—almost—Harper mind always whirring—what love had left Thea on the wrong side of a knife’s blade? Cut to ribbons and still wanting to hold another, to heal the world—would he have been like this, had he lived?
“I won’t ask you to put down your ghosts.” Thea kissed her again. “Just stay with me for the night.”
Tentatively, Jaheira brought her hands up to Thea’s face, and kissed her in earnest.
It felt…simple. Familiar. She had done this so many times before, when she was young, and it hadn’t mattered, and then, unexpectedly, it had. Thea’s hands on her were patient, nothing frantic or bitter about them. She had tumbled into bed with a stranger before, but always, it had been a stranger who would take her like an animal, reduce her to nothing but blood and teeth and viscera, bring her to a place of nothing but need.
She had reached that place now. She needed those fingers stroking her hair, her breasts, trailing down her stomach, taking her apart with such impossible gentleness that it almost brought her to tears. Thea’s touch was methodical. Her words blurred into melody, but the tone was caring in a way that woke some old, frightened animal in Jaheira’s chest.
She felt Thea’s mouth between her slick thighs and cried out, forgetting herself—her image, her standing, whatever this would mean in the morning. For a single moment, she was truly unburdened, and she would remain in that moment for as long as she possibly could.
+
Thea didn’t want to be touched. “It’s not how I do things,” she said uncomfortably, and Jaheira didn’t press—thought about the scar, and the way Thea had said a good love with something close to longing. She propped herself up on her elbows and studied the other woman.
“Tell me about her.”
“Who?” Thea shifted. “Oh—we—I—”
Khalid would have liked this woman, Jaheira thought. He would have trusted her in a matter of seconds, talked Jaheira into trusting her as well. Clear as day, she could see him in the back of her mind, eyes crinkled around the corners: I un-understand your concern, my love, but one must—must, on occasion, believe in a good thing when we—when we find it.
“I lost my husband a century ago,” she said. “I…have never recovered. I do not think I ever will. He was…” Her sentence faded in her mouth. “Oh, I am sure I was annoyed by him, but I cannot remember it, and that makes losing him all the more frustrating.”
Thea looked apprehensive in a way that Jaheira understood. It took her a moment to speak.
“My lady never wanted to marry me,” she said. “Wouldn’t. She was an elf, so let’s not look at that too closely. I knew she wasn’t…” Now it was her turn to trail off. “But she needed someone. There was no one else to love her.”
Jaheira reached out towards the scar again. Thea flinched, but she didn’t pull away, letting Jaheira run a thumb carefully across her throat.
“Have you ever loved, Alya?”
She had always been one for nicknames—perhaps to her detriment. There was something about this woman that inspired tenderness.
“I loved her,” said Thea. “Fucking tore me up inside.”
“And did she love you?”
Thea didn’t answer.
Jaheira knew that she could love a woman like this. She never would again. If she closed her eyes and saw two corpses—watched as the world snuffed out yet another bright light—
“You will find that good love,” she said. Thea smiled painfully, clearly not believing her, and so Jaheira said it again: “You will find that good love. And it will find you.”
i have had these girls for over a year at this point and wanted to tighten up their designs now that i know them better!!! plus now if i wanna make little informational blurbs i have icons i can use. big win.
playlist series is still ongoing!!!!
words cannot ever describe how fond i am of thea. and really, what's not to love?????
listen to thea's favorite songs here!!!
picture to burn taylor swift / together you and i dolly parton / let my love open the door pete townsend / dancing in the moonlight toploader / better get to livin' dolly parton / cover me bruce springsteen / turn to stone electric light orchestra / i'm goin' down bruce springsteen / hungry heart bruce springsteen / since you been gone rainbow / silver springs fleetwood mac / learning to fly tom petty & the heartbreakers / all too well (ten minute version) taylor swift / i will survive gloria gaynor / haven't met you yet michael buble
