ty @et-augury for starting this train! I love this reflective kind of tag that lets me re-engage with work I've already published
prompt: I want to read about (or see, for my VPers/artists) a small mercy in your fic. A quick action, a split-second decision, a moment where kindness won when it didn't have to. This includes acts of self-kindness, too - maybe the hardest type of mercy.
though I feel like this should be an easy lay up for Salvius, I don't babes is quite there with her journey 😂 so, instead, I pulled an excerpt from my other fic, A Willing Fool, in the moment where Shadowheart realizes she deserves better than....whatever this is
and soft tag for @acreaturebythewater @goodgirlgonebard @ignistigator and anyone else who sees this and feels that it resonates with their work!
He whips his head to her joyfully, slightly overcalculating the movement and bumping his nose against hers. He chuckles drunkenly and apologises, but doesn’t pull away. His expression is a beautiful, uncomplicated picture of tenderness, so close to her she can begin to see individual stems of his dark lashes.
In her chest, her heart skips a beat. In her stomach, the discomfort sharpens into a hard dagger.
“Tav, you should go,” Shadowheart says over the pounding in her ears. Astarion throws her a pointed look at her from under Tav’s other arm, prickly with annoyance now, too.
Maybe it was ungrateful. To be unsatisfied with the affection Tav could offer, to feel left wanting by a man was so boundless and generous with love. To spoil it for Astarion, who was so obviously a man starved for affection. And for Tav, too, who was so good and sincere.
But maybe she was ungrateful. And demanding. And a bitch. Then so be it.
Maybe she was just as tired of denying her nature as she was of this.