Chapter Text
What makes a person whom they are? Biology? Memory? The question plagued many a night’s lack of sleep as Tamryn laid upon her bedroll, eyes staring up at the sky. Who *was* she? Monster, murderer, villain or friend, lover, hero.
Did heroes slaughter and hide the bodies of young bards wanting nothing more than shelter for the night? Did friends dive into the private thoughts of their companions simply because they could? Would a lover try to kill their partner?
A solid conclusion evaded her. She was all those things but none as well. A mismatched puzzle that no matter how many times she shuffled the pieces upon the board, none would fit and bring to light the picture they concealed.
There were nights, though, where Astarion was a wonderful distraction. When she was with him, she could occupy her mind in creating new memories. She could lose herself in those stolen moments in the woods, the comforting coolness of his body supporting hers. The past mattered little when she lavished in the delicate savagery of his bite.
No matter how much she tried, though, something was still missing. There would be no filling the blackness that was everything before she awoke on the Nautiloid…
…until they arrived at Moonrise Towers.
Kethric Thorm knew her. How? Why? That was not obvious, but she had been at Moonrise Towers before.
A fallen star the muck infested cracks within the walls of Moonrise Towers called her. Midnight worries confirmed - monster, murderer villain. What others horrors was she yet to discover about herself?
A necromancer, Kressa, knew her as well. She had been Kressa’s favorite - the first to receive the gift of a tadpole.
The more she encroached upon the truth - the full truth, the further the distance between past and present grew. More questions than answers. More uncertainty than certainty. Perhaps it was better not to know, to live within a purposeful shadow of her amnesia.
Those shadows were not to be Tamryn’s comfort. One creature saw to that, purposefully or not.
Orin.
Orin was at Kethric’s side just before Tamryn and companions brought him to his final end. At the time, though, Tamryn thought Orin merely part of the three, much the same as the other spoke of the triad - Enver Gortash.
Baldur's Gate saw to Tamryn’s continuing education.
Bhaalspawn. Competition. Victim. Three new descriptives added to the pile. The pieces slowly began to interlock, the outline of whom she had been slowly emerging from the fog.
Would Enver Gortash make the opaque more tangible? Would a meeting with him further help balance the scales between unknown and known?
The invitation came to visit him shortly after they arrived in Baldur's Gate and Tamryn’s first meeting with Orin. He stood at the end of the audience hall as coifed and self-assured as he came off when she briefly saw him last.
There something about him that brushed the periphery of memory. The manner in which his mouth twitched in a smirk laced with an arrogance steeped in untouchable confidence. The smell of his cologne - sharp and spicy with hints of oak moss. The way his dark eyes seemed to see the whole of her with a level of acceptance not even Astarion has shown.
To be known was something she desperately sought. He knew her and she knew him. He evoked a sense of familiarity she had not even felt with Orin, her supposed sister in brutality. Others painted her the victim, something fallen, nothing more than an incubation chamber for the tadpole inside, Gortash spoke of her power and glory - of a mastermind that conspired with him in the creation of the entire plot she and those she traveled with had been fighting to destroy. He did not see a victim but something else all together - a partner.
The truce and alliance he offered could well have been a trap. A ploy to draw her in so that he might later take advantage. No doubt he knew of her amnesia, of how it made Tamryn vulnerable, even weak at times. Such thoughts should have horrified her but instead, she felt a respect for Gortash that scared her slightly. If roles were reversed, she knew she would have done the same.
She searched his mind to seek confirmation. His offer was genuine. He had no like or trust in Orin. Tamryn, however, her, he liked.
And I liked you. The response so reflexive in her mind she was sure others could see the change in her expression no matter how quickly she recomposed herself.
Images, unbidden, came in a flash within her mind.
The feel his hands upon her skin.
The gravel in his voice, breath hot upon her ear and neck, when he declared how pleased he was they came to more than one accord.
The way her dagger traced from sternum to just below the waistband of his pants, the faintest trail of blood left in blade’s wake.
The taste of that blood upon her tongue.
Fantasy? The dark urge compelling her to play, discover, evolve? Or were these true memories? Recollection stoked from sense memory?
An all too familiar frustration bit at her tongue, the feel of teeth against flesh all that kept her from screaming out in the midst of the audience chamber.
But for all the anger, all the consternation and uncertainty, she did leave her meeting with Gortash with at least some clarity. A juncture in the road lay before her. Two paths and she had but to chose which to traverse - embrace her past and seek her birthright or seek redemption in the destruction of all she once aimed to build.
The tip of a finger glided upon the dagger at her side as they exited the new Archduke's audience chamber. The decision was an easy one.
She could no longer be both hero and villain. Monster or friend. Lover or murderer. Nothing could erase whom she had been. Nothing could offer a redemption she was not even sure she sought or wanted. Those little moments of cruelty on the road to Baldur's Gate were painted in with a new stroke. Blood called blood.