Masked: Part One
Summary: Rolan misses his chance with Tav at the end of the events of BG3 and a year passes where his yearning only grows. An opportunity to see her again arises when the city of Baldur’s Gate throws a grand masquerade to celebrate the heroes who defended the city from the illithid plot. He’s not one for parties and he wants to toss the invite away. Will his sense of responsibility keep him from happiness?
My 400 tumblr follower fic featuring all of our favorite tropes. This fic will be either two or three parts and finished very soon. Part One is SFW, following parts will not be.
Tags: 3.5k words, this part SFW but the whole fic will be N$FW when complete, Rolan x Tav, Unnamed Tav not heavily described, POV Rolan, BG3 plot spoilers, yearning, idiots in love, Rolan x Tav, minor angst, Rolan needs a therapist tbh, 400 follower fic,
Note: Thank you to @dutifullylazybread for the edits and beta read! As well as @mumms-the-word for sending the ask that put a masquerade backdrop in my mind. Thank you to all my followers and fellow enjoyers of this handsome tiefling, we’ve built ourselves such a cool corner of the internet and it’s truly a reflection of all of you. <3
READ BELOW OR ON AO3
“A Grand Masquerade Gala for the Heroes of the Gate”
The invite reads in big gold leaf letters, his mind can’t help but to imagine the cost of the invite alone before he forces it back on to the task at hand. Irritation flickers across his face as Rolan shakes his head with frustration.
The invitation had arrived that morning and he’d found himself agitated since opening it. Of course, Cal and Lia had not helped with that in the slightest.
“You’re being honored with the group. Why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost?” Cal had guffawed at his elder brother’s face, which had notably paled — Rolan’s dusky red skin had taken on a soft rosy hue.
“It’s nothing.” He’d answered in a clipped tone that he immediately regretted. Lia’s ears had only grown more keen with the passage of time, much to his chagrin.
Her eyes lit up with a typical knowing mischief as she sipped away at her tea before chiming in coolly, “Cal I don’t know much about ghosts, can someone look like they’ve seen a ghost if the person who haunts them is still very much alive?”
The room had filled with the sound of Cal’s glee and the scrape of Rolan’s chair against the tiles as he’d stood from his seat in hasty retreat. Lia’s victorious, near-pompous silence had been louder than all of it.
“If you’ll excuse me,” he’d said sharply, leveling a glare at Lia and avoiding any further interaction with the invitation by leaving it behind on the table. He wasn’t sure of his plan — like maybe if he’d left quick enough the whole problem would resolve itself before long with no further needed stress from him.
Yet hours later when he returns to the kitchen to grab a cup of tea, he finds the invitation right where he’d dropped it.
Rolan nervously peers around for Cal and Lia. They’re supposed to be out for the day if he recalls correctly. Lia should be enjoying her day off at the beach with Alfira and their friends. A smile pulls at his mouth when he remembers that Cal is on grocery duty this week and should be at the markets picking over vegetables and haggling over fish prices. Still, he double checks to be sure he’s alone before he’s caught approaching the gilded headache once more.
When he takes the invitation in his hands once more, he almost winces at the way his hands look on the paper. His clawed fingertips seem to mar the otherwise perfect parchment, surely from some posh upper city printing house.
“The Heroes of the Gate”
He scrubs his face with his free hand as he looses a weary sigh.
He has avoided her successfully for nearly a year now.
Tav had come by the tower a few times since his blunder a year ago to visit his siblings. If he’d been very lucky, he would be very busy during her visit and only able to wave in passing. Sometimes her visits hadn't been as lucky and he’d been forced to busy himself with ridiculous tasks to keep him out of sight of her. He deserved it though, she certainly didn’t want to see him after the last time they’d spoke. He shudders at the thought.
Lia wasn’t wrong. As much as he hates to admit it — even to himself. Tav haunts his very steps — much like a piano melody haunts the mind of a music lover.
His heart feels like it’s breaking in his chest at the brief admission. Tears brim his eyes and threaten to spill but he masters himself.
“Gods, you’re supposed to be over her. Why aren’t you over her?” He hisses it to himself, as if he can command his heart to listen to reason.
He is a man of logic and facts, truth and the science of all things arcane and beyond. He’d always been that way and until he’d met Tav he’d been happy that way as well.
After what he’d suffered in his childhood, affairs of the heart were of little interest to him. He’d built himself up for years and his mettle had been tested during the Fall of Elturel. But still he’d held fast for his siblings and for the brighter future he had to create for them. He was a survivor, he’d never needed anything more than his mind and his own two hands.
But she broke him in a matter of seconds. With just her quick wit and a smile, he’d felt his very defenses threaten to crumble. How else had she managed to change his mind so quickly to stay longer in that blasted Druid Grove? Over a year later he can still feel the fear fresh in his heart.
Not the fear from the attacks by gnoll and goblin — no, those wounds had begun to close already. The truth he’d only admit to himself is that it’s Tav he fears most of all, she is truly his only weakness.
And he’d been a coward.
He grimaces when he remembers the last time he’d really spoken to her at any length. The blunder that still dogs his steps. It was just after they’d defeated the threat to Baldur’s Gate. Even sweat-soaked and soot-clad she’d been a vision to behold. A small laugh punches out of him unbidden when he remembers her hair — the long tresses had been matted with seaweed and sand from her swim out of the Chionthar. Tav had the river bottom in her hair and he'd still been too scared to be honest with her.
“Would you ever want to, I don’t know, get together sometime — just you and I?”
She’d lingered back, saying her farewells as her party bid his siblings goodbye. Her eyes, which usually held his gaze with an unflinching focus, had darted to the ground as she spoke. Anxiously her hands had busied themselves working another bit of seagrass from her mane. His mind reeled as the data aligned to form a conclusion that had made his blood run cold — his crush is right in front of him and she feels the same way?
In his wildest imaginings he had never considered, never planned that she could feel the same way. He’d spent more hours awake in bed than appropriate thinking of her, wondering if she was safe and where she was. He’d even recalled old conversations of theirs and imagined new ones between them to pass the time, imagining how she might react to general goings-on in his life. In the darker moments he had agonized over how she would react if she ever knew the truth of his feelings. His stomach had turned at the idea of her kind rejection or even worse, her disgust that someone like him had dared to admire her in the first place.
And he wouldn’t have blamed her. Tav wasn’t just simply beautiful like so many people could be. Tav was kinder than most of the people he’d met in his life, with a bright smile and lilting laugh that could lift even his gloomiest spells. Standing alongside her in the darkest and most cursed places he’d reached in his life — she had shone clear as day through it all. She was fair and pure, too much so for the likes of him.
Never did he imagine she might feel the same.
His fears had morphed right before his very eyes, from simple worries over an unrealistic crush to a very real panic over how he should respond. His heart and his mind had never been at war like this before. Rolan’s eyes cast about for his siblings who were still chatting with Tav’s companions, the very real reminders of his most important responsibility and a debt he could never repay.
The air hung heavy with the silence that followed her question. He’d cursed himself again for making things awkward by getting lost in his own thoughts.
“Uh… I’m quite busy these days. The Tower and all…”
It hadn’t even been a good lie and Tav had seen through it instantly. Of course she had, his heart would never have sought out a dullard. Her mouth opened and for a moment she’d looked stricken, but just as quickly the look was gone. She was gracious, even if she had avoided eye contact with him and left quickly after, gathering her companions and saying her last goodbyes to Cal and Lia.
He thought his feelings would wane with time.
They did not.
If anything, the time had only made them grow more keen.
He sighed again, his mind lost in thought. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t hear Lia approach silently until it is too late. Her eyes lit by giddiness at having caught him “red handed” and very much in his feelings.
“I knew it!”
He drops the invitation to the table again and levels a sharp glare at his sister. With an eye roll and an irritated sigh, he addresses her sharply.
“You know what, Lia? That I can read party invitations?”
“That you still like her.” Lia’s voice lilts into the air with a sickly sweet sing-song tone.
“Who?”
“Don’t play dumb Rolan, you’re better than that.”
“I was just thinking.”
“Mhmm, about her.”
His next sigh is loaded with exasperation. His attempt at changing the subject had been rebuffed by Lia who is doggedly pursuing a conversation he doesn’t want to have. Rolan doesn’t know what to say— anything but the truth is preferable. He doesn’t have to wait as Lia continues her own special brand of well-meant, but ill-timed, sisterly harassment.
“Rolan, you will never know if she feels the same if you don’t speak to her again. You know that, right?”
“Oh, I know she feels the same.”
Lia’s eyes widen at the casually uttered truth. His blasted mind, always too clever for his own good — in his haste to debate his sister,he’d let slip the secret he had been keeping all this time.
“Zurgan.” He curses his own idiocy under his breath.
“What do you mean? You know she feels the same?!”
Lia’s voice is raised and she looks angry — truly and properly angry at him. Sure, they could be annoyed with one another, but they were very rarely angry with one another. He hastens to calm her down, but soothing has never been a strong quality of his. Even as irritated as he is, he can proudly admit that his sister is far too clever for him to escape this one. With an anxious glance away, he rubs the back of his neck and decides on the just telling her the truth.
“She and I spoke in private, briefly, the day it all happened. She, uh,” he takes a deep breath as if to brace himself against the rest of his words, “She asked to get together — just the, uh, two of us… in private.’
“And?!”
“And I… uh, I told her that I was, of course, very busy—“
Lia swats at his chest with her hand before he can finish the sentence. The first slap doesn’t seem to quell her rage, and so she delivers a few more little swats in quick succession. His face burns with embarrassment, but he doesn’t do much to block her, he knows this is what he deserves.
“Rolan, why? Why would you tell her that? You lied to her!!!”
He opens his mouth in an attempt to answer, and she cuts him off as her brain slots the new information into place like puzzle pieces. Lia swats at him again.
“Wait! So THIS is why she’s been wandering around looking so sad for a year?!”
“She’s not sad, she was fine when I spoke to her,”
“Rolan, you’ve avoided her for a year, you bloody coward, you have no idea what you’re talking about. You idiot. Why?! Why would you lie?”
Her face is awash in a mix of confusion and anguish. The sight of it of causes a little stab of pain directly to his heart.
“I got scared.”
He says it quietly and quickly as he looks away from Lia, his face now surely a deep scarlet.
“What are you scared of? Of finally being happy!? You deserve to be happy, Rolan!”
All of Lia’s shouting has attracted Cal, also returned home and laden with bags from his errands. The younger man wanders into the room, wearing a look of confusion as he sets down the purchases from the market.
“What is going on here?” He asks.
“Rolan is just about to explain to us why he let the love of his bloody life slip away like some absolute dunce—“
“Because I promised to take care of you!”
Another truth bursts from him — pushed by the stress of Lia’s badgering and the bitter loneliness of such long-held sadness. The room feels small now, the walls too close,and he knows looking up at his siblings stunned faces won’t help the feeling. He’s a coward again as he hastily retreats out of the room, first the invitation and now his siblings left hanging in his wake.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Managing to avoid Cal and Lia for days on end is actually easier than one might imagine. Ramazith's Tower is quite large, with many areas only accessible to those who can command the Weave with a deft hand. Meddlesome and nosey as they may be, magic users his siblings are not.
The hours are lonely, filled with quiet reading and research. His predecessor had been as lazy as he was stupid; as such, the tower was still filled with tomes, scrolls, and books unseen by mortal eyes for centuries.
Imagining Lorroakan’s bitter, enraged face at Rolan’s hellspawn hands all over information his former master couldn’t even begin to comprehend in the first place, does wonders to keep him going with little rest.
And it’s needed, he’s only sleeping when he falls asleep studying, little naps at a desk when his eyes are too heavy to forge on.
He’s been sorting through another room of rare and sometimes dangerous books. It’s been his goal from the start to return as much information from this vast hoard of knowledge to the people of Baldur’s Gate as possible. For far too long, elitist attitudes had dominated the field of wizardry. His predecessor had been amongst the worst, casting judgement and delighting in the misery of others from a literal throne of books.
But that was before Tav had saved him from all of it.
The thought pops into his head unbidden, distracting him from the scribbled writing in front of him. Before he can refocus himself, she floods into his mind — her laugh ringing clear and bright. She’s always been so cheerful despite having gone through more than most people he’d known — which truly says a lot, since his friends were mostly survivors and refugees from Elturel.
It irritated him at first. How could she be so damned happy all the time? But before long, he found himself missing the musical sound of her laughter or her unnatural ability to find the positive in anything — of course, that had been before he’d ruined their friendship.
Remembering the briefest flash of sadness on her face at his words still makes him feel sick to his stomach a year later. It wasn’t until she was gone from his life that it had truly occured to him how much he’d come to love her smile. A heavy weight, near painful, tightens his chest when he realizes how much he misses her smile. He shakes his head bitterly and brushes his hair back out of his eyes and behind his horns. Tears well in his eyes, and the words blur on the pages beneath him.
It’s the blasted invitation. Dredging up all this emotion within him once more, making him relive old memories that he’d worked tirelessly to outrun.
“She probably hates me now.” The thought is probably supposed to be a reassuring one, but his mind, thick with anxiety, misses the mark by a league. With a deep breath he tries again — “she’s probably moved on and so should I by focusing on what i'm good at — my work.” The second attempt is almost enough to calm him, if not for the ugly heat that rises in his chest at the thought of her with anyone else. Zurgan, he’s truly pathetic.
It takes some time for the worst of his feelings to pass once more, but before long he’s back to sorting through the uncatalogued troves of information. He’s working in a section that seems specific to the life of a particular mage of some talent, but their name hasbeen lost to the harsh passage of time. It’s there he finds a small volume among sheaves of parchment and yellowed, bone-dry scrolls. A spell of protection guards it, withered and weathered with the passage of time.
“A primitive spell guarding this, simple work really,” he muses gleefully as he breaks the enchantment with only a relatively simple but nuanced turn of the weave.
The leather-bound tome clicks open as the book’s protection vanishes. Rolan is immediately disappointed as he discovers what appears to be a personal journal of some sort. He flips through the pages, finding mostly the day to day thoughts of a high-level wizard — new spell component ideas, musings on experiments — nothing particularly groundbreaking. He’s about to close the diary and continue when one of the final entries grabs his attention and he reads:
“At the end of things I am alone and I’ve only myself to blame. My deepest and truest regret in this world will always be a life lived in solitude. These tomes and this tower are my responsibility to bear, but I often ask myself — need I have borne it alone?
"I am a withered old man, replaced by my apprentice already and awaiting oblivion. A life of research, of dedication to my duties, finds me bereft of comfort in my last days. After all this time, I find myself wondering if he could have ever loved me back? And if I had found the courage to find out — would everything be different now? Alas, all I’m left with are my imaginings of what could have happened and a keen sense of regret.
"It’s odd that after so long, my mind should stray to him at the end. Few things are clear to me in the fog of my mind, but I can still picture his eyes just like the day I first looked into them back at the academy. I can only hope he is happy and maybe that he thinks of me, not in sadness but… just to remember me.
"If anyone reads these regrets of an old man, you must do something for me. You have to find out. You have to make it real”
He stands up quickly from the kitchen table, heart racing and palms sweaty, reeling from what he’s read. It’s too late. All of his work will mean nothing, and in the end he will have sacrificed everything for responsibility. His fears are laid so clearly before him, and it’s too late to alter the course. A panic grips his very core and threatens to consume him.
“Rolan? Rolan!”
A voice cuts through the heavy walls of emotions that are closing in on him. Tav appears at the kitchen door, entering the room with such familiarity it pains him.
“There you are, love! I missed you!”she continues as she strides up, leaving a quick but tender kiss on his cheek like she has done it a thousand times before. His mind reels asking, how can she act so casually, as if it doesn’t cause Rolan’s tail to swish and curl from the thrill of her lips on his skin. Like a fish gasping for air, his mouth opens and closes as he stops and starts the many questions that race to his mind before he can utter a single word.
And gods, she’s just as beautiful as ever. The human woman is all soft curves in a way that has always caused his eyes to wander where they should not. Her beautiful hair cascades behind her form as she moves about the room.
If Tav notices his confusion, she doesn’t let on as she deposits her belongings on the table with a contented sigh. Before he can finally get the words out, to ask just what is going on, a cacophony of sound thunders into the kitchen.
“Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!”
The epicenter of the noise is a small tiefling girl, no older than five, but her boisterous entrance is not what causes Rolan’s heart to skip several beats in his chest. The girl running into Tav’s arms with delight does bear some small resemblance to her upon first glance, but the tiefling features — red skin and burning yellow eyes — those are unmistakably his.
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