felt something hearing Karlach say that when Gortash sold her to Zariel he said she would be able to withstand Zariel's new machine, "and he was right." beyond the betrayal, it hurts that he made the correct assessment because he knew her. he understood her. he was aware of (and respected?) her strength and indomitable spirit. maybe that made the betrayal easier. he told himself "she can handle it" and he was right.
the "my favorite character did nothing wrong" mindset is completely unappealing to me because i love thinking about all the things my favorite characters did wrong
Fandom: Baldur's Gate 3
Characters: Dame Aylin/Isobel Thorm
Rating: T, for canon-typical violence and implied sexual content
Summary:
Aylin: We are not welcome, my love. No matter. We will hie us to the Hill of the Headless Dancer and bare our flesh beneath the cleansing light of the moon's soft gaze.
Isobel: A hundred years hasn't changed you at all, my love.
Aylin and Isobel on a different trajectory, as wandering Selûnites bound for anywhere other than Baldur's Gate. A what-if tour of a chunk of Faerûn, branching off from a rejection at the end of Act 2.
Hello! Sorry for the disappearing act. Here's some fic as a bit of recompense. It's got a probably predictable-by-now mix of fluff and angst and hurt/comfort, themes of purpose and duty and self-determination and faith, and a lot of travel to diverse locales with two women who've really been through it, but also really, really love each other.
This is a piece I wrote for a gift exchange on an Aylin/Isobel Discord server, but it really got away from me! It's a sort of five times plus one structure, so expect one chapter a day.
Also on AO3.
—
1. The Road
Her helmet was nestled in the crook of her arm, catching stray rays of late, low sunlight, as she stood overlooking the valley before them and the unfortunate fork in the road that bisected it. Dame Aylin, lashing the Western Heartlands countryside with her glare, standing taller and far prouder than the weathered road sign next to her. Isobel allowed herself a smile and the smallest of enamoured sighs at the striking figure she cut, before stepping forward.
They were coming up on just over a tenday of travel.
Selûnite self-sufficiency had been rather unfortunately theoretical for Isobel until recently, though not entirely by choice. The House of Healing had always had its nursing staff; Moonrise its servantry; the Last Light Inn had had the Harpers. Doing so many things with her own two hands was a welcome novelty, yes, but also a challenge.
So here she was, with her first full taste of adventure as a mundane, physical, bodily experience, as opposed to a glorious and heroic abstraction, with all the blisters and scrapes and strains and road-dust it entailed, and the low, stubborn cough she tried to swallow before it could turn into anything Aylin would fuss over. Save for her clerical training and a few visits and pilgrimages — and even that after much struggle and argument — Isobel had never gotten to travel very far from Reithwin, in the life Before. Had been planning to, of course, with Aylin; taking wing and leaving even Moonhaven a distant dot on the horizon.
But things had happened the way they had, and fate had had other ideas. Had taken them here via more winding, unusual roads.
Speaking of roads — Isobel cleared her throat of the aforementioned dust that insisted on sticking to the back of it, and adjusted the pack she carried (much smaller, in comparison, than the one Aylin insisted on hoisting over her shoulders).
The faithful of Our Lady are spread thinly across the North, Aylin had said, when they'd set out. It would be a fine thing, would it not, to visit them? To bring aid and assurance where it might be needed?
And so, instead of south and west to Baldur's Gate, they had gone north and east. They had no business in the city, after all.
Now, however, the tension visible in Aylin's shoulders, the hardening of the line of her mouth as she fixed her attention on the sign which quite innocuously read Westfield - 9 miles, Torm's Way - 19 miles, prompted Isobel to action.
Her angel was tired, but too proud to admit it, and gods knew she was still hurt. This Isobel could see as plain as Selûne's face on a full moon night; just as she could tell when Aylin was making an attempt at listening for something from her divine Mother. That, at least, had not changed much over the century they'd been parted, though lately it seemed to have taken on a more eager, even needy sheen.
"My readings on the ecclesiastical are woefully out of date, but I do not recall ever hearing of Selûne supplying guidance via…" Isobel tilted her head and offered a wry smile to go with her interruption, "…rustic roadside signposts?"
The grimness receded somewhat from Aylin's brow, an immediate softening at Isobel's proximity. And so Isobel pushed home, tone mild but boding little discussion. "Let us take the left path, to Westfield. We will certainly make it before nightfall, and then we can eat a hot supper and sleep under a roof. And besides, my feet ache awfully."
Aylin knew exactly what she was doing — her smile showed as much, amidst its gentleness, as she turned that openly adoring attention fully towards Isobel's played-up moue. But she must have decided not to care. "My darling is ever wise, and should not suffer undue discomforts. We shall do as you say."
-
They'd had a horse, briefly, on the first leg out of Elturel — a subdued, mostly indifferent roan mare bartered for in the first stable they'd happened upon. Isobel had not ridden for a longer stretch since childhood, and so took the chance to marvel at the smell and the small sounds of the stolid, hardworking animal shifting beneath her, just as much as her own thighs and hips making themselves known and protesting quite quickly. But the most appealing aspect of it was the sense of Aylin at her back with an arm wound just tightly enough around her waist, warm and solid and deliberate about every touch and movement, her chin occasionally coming to rest on Isobel's shoulder as they trotted along.
The horse they left at Boareskyr Bridge, in the good hands — this they made sure of — of an experienced caravan master preparing to set out. On foot after that, winding around and criss-crossing the Trade Way, they cared little for weather or terrain. Aylin took wing on occasion, but Isobel would not let her exhaust herself carrying them both. Besides, they wanted to see and experience and explore and help, not fly overhead, letting everything pass them by, neglected.
None of that anymore.
The road and all that came with it was good because she was facing it on her own terms, Isobel decided. The ache in her legs at the end of a long day was hers. The gratification of cresting a ridge and finding the next unfamiliar valley spread out below was hers, just as much as the joy and simple wonder of guessing what lay over the next hill, and the next.
When they stopped, there was also frequently the satisfaction of healing a bad wound, of turning a fever at the last possible moment, of providing relief for a lifelong-borne condition, or a blessing for some great upcoming undertaking. But also the frustration of not having enough magic or herbs or potions, of mistaking one chorus of symptoms for another, of taking too long, or of simply arriving too late after an incident or an altercation. All of it, part and parcel. All of it hers.
These lands had not been touched by her father's century-old sins, nor had they been reached by his recent misdeeds with the Absolute. Their troubles had nothing to do with Isobel at all — and that was the truest gift.
-
The soothing coolness of the coppice struck Isobel fully as she pulled off her muck-covered boots, then peeled off her gloves and sat down by the stream they'd spotted and decided to stop for, in the middle of a sweltering afternoon. Unbuttoning her collar and the first few buttons, then splashing water onto her flushed face and chest was nothing short of divine. The dappled sunlight on the brook was a lovely sight; lovelier still were the breeze and the shade and the slow easing of the pounding in her head and the burning in every muscle of her legs.
She took an eager sip from the waterskin Aylin pressed into her hands without comment as she knelt down beside her in the soft, loamy soil.
An ill-fitting strip of leather inside a boot Isobel had patched up one too many times had done its worst, leading to a heel scraped painfully raw. Aylin insisted on tending to it, almost comically able to cup Isobel's entire foot in one hand. When she was done cleaning and bandaging, she made no move to get up, and instead kissed up Isobel's calf, played at nibbling at her thigh even through trousers, smiling up so winningly from beneath road-dust-heavy robes, that Isobel looked up to study the canopy above with great focus and a jaw set very firmly.
"We can stay here for the night," she pronounced finally, only a little strained. "It's a nice enough place for a camp."
"Indeed. We must give your poor foot a chance to heal," Aylin spoke very seriously, as if she hadn't just pulled Isobel into her lap and wasn't occupied by turns kissing along the line of her jaw and tugging at the laces on her front.
Together, always within reach — what a wonder it was, what a miracle above all others, above even resurrection itself. Walking together, eating together, washing in cold streams together, sleeping wound up in each other in a bedroll that was not quite large enough. It seemed utterly impossible they'd ever truly get their fill of each other.
Aylin murmured this, happily and drowsily and insistently, into the flushed skin of Isobel's neck, later, as they lay entwined. How there was no century, nay, no eternity, that could make her deem it enough time spent in Isobel's company.
A sweet thought, with a bitter aftertaste that stole some of Isobel's sleep away — until the trail and the trek had her so thoroughly exhausted that even her dourer thoughts could not compete with the call of rest in the safety of Aylin's arms.
-
It was dreadfully hard to look away from Aylin in her element. Roaring a challenge, grim smile splitting her face wide, gold lines glistening, reflecting the glow that suffused every bit of her and set her drawn sword aflame. The sight of her had the handful of brigands scattering without another word or imprudent attempt at a threat. She hadn't even needed to step forward; had not swung her weapon at all.
Her most untouchable moments were when Isobel yearned to touch her most.
The last of the men disappeared into the trees. Aylin turned back with a satisfied expression, letting her sword-arm fall back to her side and then letting the blade dissolve into motes of light.
"Efficiently done," Isobel said, with a composure she was fairly confident was convincing, stepping closer but not reaching for her just yet, no matter how inviting it always was.
"The louts will reconsider their ill-chosen vocation," Aylin said with another dangerously luminous grin. "Else I shall have to provide further encouragement."
But Isobel had noticed a flash of something else, in the moment before she spoke. Almost like a hunger; as though the terrifying gold-lit certainty of herself was something Aylin wanted to be reminded of. As if some coiled, restless thing still in her had needed this outlet and had gotten only a teasing taste in a threat met and ended so quickly.
-
A tenday later, in a settlement where a long-running dispute over rights to using a water mill had curdled into something uglier in the heat of a late summer drought, it was Isobel who nudged Aylin forward when the village headwoman's hopeful eyes found them.
Aylin heard all involved parties out with patience, with a convincing air of someone who was used to adjudicating matters of far greater consequence, yet glancing at Isobel thrice in the process. She had always loudly and demonstratively respected Isobel's judgement, yes, but now she also seemed uncharacteristically unsure of her own — even if it was only a little, it made concern brew in Isobel's gut.
The good reputation of Selûnites in general was working quite heavily in their favour. Aylin leaned into it, and ultimately pronounced a ruling with sufficient conviction and gravity it was accepted with only mild resentment.
Aylin was gracious about it all. It was only later, when they were being shown where to settle in for their brief stay, that Isobel caught the particular set of her jaw and furrow of her brow that spoke of discontent. But it proved difficult to snatch away a moment of privacy, so concerns had to wait.
They ate at the headwoman's table that evening: a hearty meal of dark rye bread, thick mutton stew, a sharp local cheese, and the first cup of something that Isobel found genuinely deserved the name tea in far too long. Under the table, their knees knocked together, their feet brushed against each other, and the long bench allowed their thighs to press close, present and reassuring as lively conversation bounced about all around them.
-
It became something of a routine: a spell for a room for a night, some herbs or potions for a meal, a blessing or two or three, freely given. Simple work wherever they found it along the road; escorting, guarding, defending — retrieving, sometimes, something or someone that was lost. Offering advice to a couple of wary lycanthropes, on one memorable occasion. Whatever they stumbled upon or managed to find for themselves. They remained bereft of, or free of, divine direction in their wanderings as they slowly eked out a winding path northwards.
It was in a farmstead half a tenday's travel south of Waterdeep that Isobel first tried the augury.
They had been given a room for the night by a farmer whose wife had a persistent problem, a stiffness in her joints that Isobel addressed handily with a bit of alchemical tincture and a cantrip. The farmer had wanted to give them coin on top of it, which they'd declined, and the matter of what else a wandering Selûnite cleric and paladin might aid with resolved itself when they heard, over supper, that the couple's eldest son had left three months ago for the city and not written or sent word at all.
Divination had never really been her primary domain, or interest — Isobel had always leaned toward the more immediately practical of her Lady's endorsed pursuits. But the silver ritual bowl was among the things she'd taken from Last Light, and both fresh milk and wine were readily available, and… well, it seemed a shame not to try.
She sat with it by the fire while the household, and Aylin, watched from a respectful distance, rapt and perfectly still. As the flames in the hearth crackled lower and lower, the contemplative, calm haze of the spell and the ripples and swirls of red in the milk felt more and more familiar and intentional to Isobel. It was a gentle, slow saturation as opposed to the often brisk and cool flow of her healing magic, always eager to manifest, to help, to resolve.
The bowl's surface stilled, and the sense of a hovering presence at her back — not the impersonal conduit of a granted spell, but a soft hand settling on her shoulder, waxing into the sensation of being embraced and welcomed — made Isobel's breath catch in a way that had nothing to do with any grim residue of the grave in her lungs.
She informed their gracious hosts that their son was alive and in good health and would write within a fortnight, with a certainty that came from somewhere she couldn't pinpoint.
When she looked up, Aylin was watching her from across the room with an expression Isobel had not previously seen on her face. It was not the adoring attention she wore for most things Isobel did, or the open, exuberant admiration she so eagerly expressed when Isobel accomplished something. It was quieter, gentler, and it looked, if Isobel was being honest about it, like it had a painful edge.
"What is it?" Isobel asked, one hand finding Aylin's after the farmer was done shaking it in gratitude, after she and her wife left them to their own devices.
Aylin didn't respond at first, attention flickering from their joined hands to Isobel's face and back. "You are so… entirely Hers," she said, with a tinge of wonder louder than any bitterness, but delivered far more breathily and softly than her usual tones. "So wonderfully in tune, so perfectly suited… so radiant."
What a thing to hear from a woman who quite literally glowed!
"I can see it so very clearly — I am certain they could, too, though they may not have fully known what they were in the presence of. My Mother could not have chosen better if She put all Her godly might behind it."
Isobel looked at her carefully, unsure of where this was going, biting back old, crowding doubts. Allowing herself the slightest frown and noting a frisson at the particular phrasing. "And?"
Aylin's mouth curved into a soft smile, eyes glimmering in the dimming firelight and shining with something like reverence. "It is simply… a wondrous thing to witness in someone I love so dearly."
Isobel held her gaze for a moment. She thought about what it might feel like to witness this while being the very daughter of the goddess in question, yet the one straining to hear amidst a prolonged silence.
"The farmer's son will write within a fortnight," she said instead. "I'm fairly confident of that."
"I do not doubt it for a moment," Aylin said, with complete sincerity and the utter conviction she was so uniquely capable of.
-
Isobel's robes shifted across her shoulders. Old and worn, the silver moon-and-stars embroidery all along the hem faded but clinging on, they were the one piece of Before she'd preserved. But now the leather cord holding her chest guard together had frayed and broken, and she cursed under her breath as she held the thing awkwardly together with one hand.
Aylin stopped her, giving her the first addition the robes had seen in a century: a slender plaited cord, worked through the eyelets of her chest guard with more concentration than the task probably warranted. Aylin's brow furrowed like she was defusing a deadly trap rather than threading a lace as she hunched over to pay her task close attention.
"There," she finally said, entirely satisfied with herself, straightening out but not taking her hands off Isobel and letting them stray only as far as her shoulders.
"Where did you get this?"
"The traders we met at the crossroads the other day had stock of all sorts of silken string. The fine blue of this one caught my eye, and its feel was pleasing under my fingers. They were glad to part with a spool of it, as part of their thanks for our aid."
"You braided this?" Isobel pulled, lightly, at the free ends of the lace to see it better.
Aylin tilted her head, made a movement that was halfway a shrug. "It was something pleasant and quiet to occupy my hands with, while you were asleep and I was not."
Isobel did not pry into the reasons for Aylin's restlessness, no matter how fiercely her first instinct insisted. "Thank you," she spoke instead, standing on tiptoes to kiss Aylin's cheek. "It's lovely."
It was, Isobel would reflect more than once in the days that followed, a far more sentimental gift than its plain appearance let on. And so she wore it gladly, and touched it more than she strictly needed to.
I really adore how Gale never clarifies why exactly he was so obsessively researching Karsus/in a position to find the orb in the first place
Like oh yeah I was Mystra’s lover but wanted more and totally separately from that I was really fixated on the story of this guy who tried to usurp the goddess of magic
Like if you don’t understand that Gale is an absolute trainwreck of ambition that is never going to be calmed or satisfied with anything but a life of constant striving you do not understand him as a character, but you have conveniently fallen for his obfuscations!
it is always narratively correct to make your characters sleep together before they sort through the hundreds of lies and misdirections between them. make things worse make things worse make things worse #i love betrayal #i love lying #i love people feeling bad about themselves
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