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The table was set - as was the scene.
Before him was a feast for the famished - a decadent meal that had long been arranged for a select few after a night of drinking, dancing, and mingling.
Three were written to dine but, thus far, only two were present; the guest of honor was (quite literally) running late. Raphael had no doubt she was well on her way, huffing and puffing through the streets and across the city to get to them, and he and his puppet would be patient.
His puppet was a most pathetic thing; the elf was solemnly inebriated, condemned to bemoan his sorry existence for having played an integral part in bringing ‘the woman he loved’ into outstretched, waiting claws.
‘The woman he loved’...
(Must she charm everyone?)
Of course, it was written that Kassius would ingratiate himself to the mouse. He was ordered to make the role his own and do whatever was necessary to progress his relationship with Her. He was a talented puppet (thanks to a talented puppeteer) who excelled beautifully in getting close, and it was erelong that Kassius’s reports came to include stories of intimacy. That the two of them would fornicate was but another written expectation; the impending destruction of her emotions would be all the more better with the betrayal of another lover!
But that his puppet came to feel genuine love and care for her? For his mouse?
An unplanned and irksome development.
Nearly a week ago, as the second act approached, Kassius expressed his grievances with the script - namely the entire sequence of events that would bring pain and suffering upon Her.
Unwisely, and a day before the curtain was set to rise, his puppet’s grievances turned into outright resistance. He rejected his upcoming role - out of love!
Love!
Bones snapped easily - especially such delicate things as mortal fingers - and Raphael found himself unable to stop at one or two. He should have foreseen the development happening; it was an understandable, natural occurrence that Kassius’s feelings for Her would grow and change after spending months together - his feelings (as complicated as they were), had done something similar.
However, with these developments came conflict; Raphael was more than aware that it was his own order that brought his puppet and his mouse to share a bed, but it now incited him to think of the fingers he held touching that which wasn’t theirs.
How unfortunate for Kassius that his entire hand came to be mangled and twisted.
A punishment for resistance, and a punishment for falling in love with Her.
(His mouse!)
Nothing that one of his debtors trained in the healing arts couldn’t fix after some hours of dedication.
There was always some semblance of fiendish gratification when administering torture, yet there was little pleasure to be had at the knowledge that his puppet was a fool. He was a fool in general for falling into the mess he was in, but more so the fool for falling in love with someone who did not love him in return.
Kassius’s love would go unrequited...
Because she loved another…
That… vampire spawn…
Astarion.
Claws dug into creaking wood as Raphael clenched the end of his seat’s arm.
After these many months, his mouse’s love persisted for her dearly beloved - for someone who abandoned her!
Bah! She likely learned the truth by now… that it was not abandonment so much as it was a ruse that was performed and executed exactly as written…
A revelation he was sore (yet should have been grateful) to have missed. What dramatics unfolded, and what lines were said between the performers? It was a certainty that his little mouse let her true identity be known to the spawn - likely done in a clever manner that managed to meet the terms of the contract.
Yes, it would have been a reunion teeming with tears, confessions, and declarations of love…
Did Astarion soothe her tears and her worries with his own admission that his love for her had not wavered? Did they kiss and cling to each other after all this time?
Before the play started, Raphael would have been jubilant imagining such a scene; how succulent her pain was to be - her knowing that she was the catalyst of her own torment, that she must take the item the spawn traded her for, and that she could never see her beloved again because she would never be able to break Astarion’s contract!
But developments had occurred…
And his mouse…
In the not-so-far-off distance, coming from the entrance hall, Raphael could hear bootsteps stride against marble.
And his mouse was fashionably late for dinner.
She appeared, chest heaving, looking disheveled. Her previously styled hair was a mess of product and perspiration and the makeup around her eyes was smudged terribly as she stared at him with utter loathing.
Even so, his mouse remained an alluring sight to behold standing there in her dress of emerald green. There was beauty in her exhaustion, in her rage and passionate hatred, and the threatening posture she took (dagger in hand and pointed in his direction), reminded him of a meal he would never forget.
The memory of fucking her would forever be recalled - as was the treat of a dance they partook in hours ago.
His-
“Little Mouse.”
“You,” spat his mouse with bared teeth and bloodlust.
Oh, how she hated him!
And it was perfectly fine that she hated him…
“Sit,” he urged with a courteousness that befitted any polite dinner host. He gestured with a clawed hand to take the ornately carved chair that sat directly across from him. Raphael then thought to add the manners his mouse previously requested. “Pretty please.”
“You’re not a mouse, a cat, or a fox; you’re a rat fucking bastard!”
His face darkened; spitefulness was anticipated, yet he would not take to being insulted - especially with another in the room!
“I will remind you of manners and decorum while you are here in my House. Now sit.”
“Fuck you, Raphael.”
This contemptuous mouse!
“SIT. DOWN!”
The authority he wielded had his puppet flinching in his peripheral, but his mouse did not twitch in the slightest - nor did she rush to bend to his will. She merely stared at him, glaring daggers with an actual one in hand, and he could read that she was weighing her options of ‘stubbornness versus compliance’.
Having chosen the wiser course of action, his mouse smiled derisively as she curtsied. “As the Archdevil Supreme demands.”
She walked to her high-back seat, stabbed her blade into the wood surface of the octagonal table, swung her pack around and sat down.
Raphael watched his mouse take to assessing her surroundings while her nostrils flared from the exertion of running from Wyrm’s Rock to the Devil’s Fee. Her eyes darted from his rosy-cheeked puppet to the fire that crackled nearby, they glanced down the empty, quiet hall that was beyond his own shoulder, and they scrutinized the spread of food that covered the table.
The feast consisted of a superbly cooked roasted boar (complete with an apple stuffed in its mouth), bowls of gravy and gleaming platters that offered seasoned vegetables and the ripest fruits he knew she favored (peaches included). Flaky pastries and buttered rolls overflowed their stands and spilled onto a lace tablecloth that touched place settings of polished cutlery and plating.
Unlike the tarnished platter she at one time used as a mirror, every piece of silver belonging to him was flawless.
It was all set-dressing; there was no real intention of sampling the marvelous dinner his debtors slaved to gather and cook.
But perhaps she would surprise him - as she was wont to do.
Raphael pierced his mouse with his gaze. “You must be hungry.”
“Surely you jest,” his mouse replied, lip curling. “But command me to eat, Archdevil Supreme, and I shall engorge myself - if only so that I might have the honor of retching all over your House of Hope.”
She had better not; he would make her clean up any spew she spilled.
His mouse looked to the puppet who sat slouched with slackened strings, and her anger ebbed to temporarily make room for sympathy at the elf’s inebriated state.
“I’m sorry you were at the ball, but I’m more sorry to see you in this garish place, Kass.”
If only she knew how much time ‘Kass’ spent in ‘this garish place’…
His puppet’s green eyes slowly met hers.
“Tav-”
“Do you have the item I desire?” Raphael inquired.
It was not yet time for them to go off script.
His mouse gave him a look of disdain before she rummaged in her pack for the vampire spawn’s amulet, and she soon revealed the item from within her bloodied and kerchief-bandaged fist.
He leaned against the arm of his chair and held out a hand, awaiting personal delivery.
The wooden legs of her chair scraped against the marble as she rose, but his mouse did not move from where she stood. She eyed his expectant palm and took care in wrapping the chain around the sunburst shaped amulet. Once the end was neatly tucked, and in a blink, she flicked her wrist and sent the amulet spinning-
-into an at-hand boat of gravy.
Fury erupted within him as flecks of brown splattered across his face and evening attire. He growled, his fingers twitching - how they itched to reflexively dole out a retaliation of hellfire!
Oh, if she were anyone else!
DAMN THIS WEAKNESS!
Seconds passed before Raphael considered his wrath tempered, and his waiting hand calmly traveled over to grab the folded napkin of his place setting. He began to wipe the gravy away from his cheeks and jaw.
“For your sake, Little Mouse, I will pretend that was an accident,” he said, sneering.
His mouse’s reply came in the form of a prideful jut of her chin and a straight back - a challenge in her eyes.
What was the saying?
Pride cometh before the fall…
Raphael frowned slightly, and he appeared disinterested as his napkin moved to dab at the string of splotches that decorated his shoulder.
“Kassius, fetch the amulet,” he offhandedly ordered.
And the response he received was both desired and predictable…
“Leave him out of this!” his mouse snarled. She stepped to the side and moved around the table to where the boat sat. Her hand motioned for the points of a gravy covered sun that poked above the sauce just as Raphael’s hand prepared to-
Snap!
The boat disappeared in a plume of smoke and embers, vanishing from within reach of his mouse’s outstretched fingers. It reappeared a half-second later across the table and atop his puppet’s previously empty plate.
“Kassius has nothing to do with this, Raphael,” said his mouse with a vicious glare. “This is between you and me, as you always intended.”
A truth - one of many he would acknowledge on this night.
He hummed as he set down his napkin.
“While one of those statements is undeniably true, the other is undoubtedly false; I think you’ll find that Kassius, in the most literal sense, has everything to do with ‘this’.”
His mouse went rigid.
“What are you talking about?” she asked with scowl and a voice that wavered alongside angry bravado. Her eyes went to his puppet, and the elf refused to look at her in return. “Kass, what is he talking about?”
“Do not say a word, Kassius, until our guest sits down,” Raphael bade, grabbing the figurative crossbar of his marionette and adding tension to the strings; the puppet would dance when he commanded! “In the meantime, do be a good boy and clean the amulet off for Tav to deliver. Come time for her second delivery attempt, do your best to hope that she does not accidentally throw it in the fire.”
“You’re such a bastard,” seethed his mouse.
The fiendish side of him swelled with elation, pushing down the lesser half of himself. It was here; the conclusion to the second act - the act he oft anticipated in the preceding months, weeks, and days to the beginning of this play!
He will savor this dinner!
He will strike and shatter her mind!
And he will feast on the pieces!
“Oh, no, my dear, I am worse than that - I am a devil, as you recently reminded me.”
Kassius, feeling the tug on his strings, straightened in his chair and pinched the top point of the amulet between forefinger and thumb. Raphael watched his distraught mouse watch her colleague and friend (and lover) as the puppet let the sun drip gravy back into the boat. The eyes of the elf were glassy and absent as the amulet was given a small shake before it was brought to a napkin to be cleaned.
“Kassius, talk to me.”
“He won’t, my dear. Not until you sit,” Raphael stated. He gave her a brief estimation from head to toe. “Which, by the looks of things, your body will do for you if you continue to be stubborn.”
His mouse again scowled and went to her chair to sit.
“Good little mouse.”
“Fuck you.”
He smirked.
“Kassius…” she started.
“Yes, Kassius - speak freely,” Raphael said whilst leaning forward and resting his chin upon intertwined fingers.
Let the truth be served! Serve course after course!
But his puppet resisted in speaking freely; Kassius placidly continued to dig at the bits of gravy that remained stuck between the crevices of the amulet’s sun shaped design.
“How impolite of you to clam up in the presence of our esteemed guest!” Raphael exclaimed, sitting back with displeasure apparent on his face. He then sighed as if burdened with a heavy weight. “I suppose that leaves me to be the Bringer of Truth…”
“Enough dramatic build up, Raphael,” muttered his mouse with bared teeth. “Lest you fail your own standards of decorum and come in your breeches at the table.”
It was bliss that, for this moment, the lesser side of himself did not exist, and Archdevil Supreme Raphael smiled cruelly.
“Of course, Little Mouse,” he crooned. His heart was racing as his infernal, heated blood surged in his veins…
His mouth watered - eager to sup!
She’s his to devour!
“Let me introduce another actor,” he continued. “The other who has been performing on a different stage, one in tandem to yours…”
His mouse’s bandaged hand found and tightened around the handle of her dagger as he prepared to serve…
“Kassius, tell dear Tav the identity of the potion seller Solenne met on that fateful day.”
Raphael dared not blink; it delighted him to watch her body tense further and he was amused by the fear that arose in her eyes as she looked to his puppet for confirmation.
“I’m the potion seller,” came the admittance from her friend and lover!
His mouse’s breath hitched at the instant expression and emotion were extinguished from her face.
Yes…
“Kassius, tell dear Tav who infiltrated her little thieving group.”
Another serving was foisted upon her!
“I did,” said his puppet.
His mouse was a blank canvas as she was forced to swallow the truth.
“Kassius, tell dear Tav who machinated the loss of work and sewed the seeds of desperation.”
“I did,” said his puppet.
He could see her mind beginning to break! She fell forward, her hand slamming against the table and rattling silverware. Raphael could no longer read her face for her head now hovered over her silver plate. She clenched her dagger in a white-knuckled grip, and she twisted the blade, gouging it further into the table’s surface.
“Kassius, tell dear Tav who lured her and Solenne into my waiting hands.”
“I did,” said his puppet.
Oh, the pain she must be feeling as betrayal wrecked havoc upon her! Blood seeped from her self-inflicted wound, dripping past his loosened kerchief of a bandage…
“Kassius, tell dear Tav who has been spying on her night and day.”
“I have,” said his puppet.
His mouse’s body suddenly relaxed, and she went still.
Perhaps her belly was full, but she would eat until there was no more to serve!
“Kassius, tell dear Tav who trained Haarlep in how to better replicate her being for this second act.”
“I did,” said his puppet.
“Kassius, tell dear Tav who knew, from the very beginning, all that would come to pass?”
“I knew,” said his puppet.
The final blow that would be delivered with a devilish grin!
“Kassius, tell dear Tav who already owns your soul?”
“You, Lord Raphael.”
After his puppet’s last admission entered the air, a deathly silent stasis settled between the three of them.
And then…
Raphael’s sharp and toothy smile faltered at the sound of a chuckle coming from the opposite end of the table…
From his little mouse…
And her chuckle grew into a sweet-sounding laugh that began to shake her bones as her fingers jerked against the dagger handle.
His smile fell the more manic the laugh became. It was a bitter, unrelenting thing, bereft of any joy and melody - a crazed laugh that wasn’t too far off from countless debtors who had lost not only their soul but their mind as well.
The duration of the laugh seemed endless, and it punctured him with each passing second. He could sense the Archdevil Supreme beginning to deflate…
What…
What had she done to him?
She’d done more than damn him!
Why was his delight ebbing? His pleasure fading?
What was this… this accursed ache in his chest?
This roiling in his gut?
Why did he long to go to her… and…
Oh, how grateful he was that the laugh was dying, for it was killing his rational and his reasoning!
And he could snap out of whatever this was!
The laughter died fully, giving way to silence.
“...Tav?” his puppet asked with a concerned whisper.
Nothing.
“Invisibilis,” his mouse murmured, practically inaudible.
At the same moment of disappearing from view, the dagger left the table. Flatware and food scattered across the surface as a phantom swiftly climbed on top.
Raphael was not worried for himself, however he was quick to react with a-
Snap!
His mouse was revealed to be looming over his puppet, her dagger hand poised to impale.
Thud!
Her dagger stabbed wood, an inch into the highback chair at the spot where his puppet’s eye would have been were it not for the puppeteer’s intervention. The elf stared at her, wide eyed with a bleeding gash across his cheek, a result of her blade and his delayed reaction.
Raphael simply watched as his mouse rapidly pulled the dagger free, and she aimed another strike at the same time his puppet sluggishly raised his hands to his chest.
“Dolor!” yelled his also-warlock.
Crackling energy split outwards and into his mouse’s chest, causing the ache in his chest to lurch while she went flipping backwards into the air, her pack flung from her body amidst a mess of silken emerald green. She landed hard against the marble with a groan, dagger skidding feet away from her, before rolling to recover onto her feet.
Raphael disliked how tense (concerned) he had become, but he would not interfere again. He was to be nothing but a spectator - the silent director - to an improvised, dramatic scene, and he could not look away from the actress who was devoid of emotion.
What was this feeling that maddeningly gnawed at his bones?
“Tav! I’m sorry!” his puppet pleaded, standing with hands raised as if hoping to calm down a wild animal.
The shell of his mouse said nothing - did nothing.
“I had no choice!” his puppet continued. “This was the debt I had to repay, don’t you see? To get my soul back!”
“Solenne?” she asked blankly.
“She’s innocent, I swear!” his puppet adamantly replied, and it was the truth; her friend was innocent of any wrongdoing outside of her selfish decision to sign a contract. “Tav, I had no choice. I… I love you!”
Raphael’s gut curdled.
Love!
Tav cast a glance at him, not his puppet, and how he loathed to see this husk of his mouse!
He could not enjoy her like this!
Why must mortals be so fragile?
“You don’t love me…” she corrected - still staring at him!
Why?
This damned, bleeding and beating heart in his chest! He would rip it out if he could! Let hellfire consume it!
BE RID OF THIS WEAKNESS!
BE RID OF HER!
“I do, though!” His puppet was desperate to save that which could not be saved. “You think I wanted to walk into your life wanting to fall in love with you? Knowing that this night was to come? It’s fucking torture! Not a day passed where I didn’t want to tell you everything… stop everything! But I couldn’t!”
“Poor soul…” replied his mouse, absently fingering the handle of the fork that remained out of view of his puppet. “Welcome to the circus.”
As she had with the amulet, the piece of silverware became a projectile. It flew through the air and over the dinner table, embedding itself into the eye of his puppet - the throw perfect, her aim exact.
“GODS! FUCK! ” the elf yelled, doubling over in shock and pain with a polished handle protruding from his face.
“An eyepatch will do you well - now you’ll look more the part of a pirate or smuggler,” his mouse said flatly. “And I want you to know that whenever we fucked, I thought of Astarion.”
Her eyes again found him, and Raphael’s eyes narrowed in company to a burgeoning sneer.
“Every time."
LIAR! he roared internally; he had had all of her! Her body had been his to fuck and claim, he saw it in her eyes the way her mind was consumed by him, and it was he who made her soul and self sing in rapture!
His mouse ignored his furious gaze as she strolled over to where her dagger lay. She picked up the weapon and gave it a single innate flip in her offhand as she stood and strode back to her seat.
There was to be no quiet with his puppet’s distressed yelling in the background, and his mouse paid her ex-colleague, ex-friend, and ex-lover no mind as she sat with sophistication, the dagger held loosely in her lap.
She blinked at him - her eyes a void.
“When is the third act set to begin?” she asked, exposing her injured hand to his puppet in expectation to receive a particular item.
Raphael’s brow furrowed; though he achieved the desired result, the third act could not progress like this…
Victory would… ring hollow…
For she was hollow…
He very much liked her - nay, very much enjoyed her…
Whole.
“Undetermined,” came his answer.
In his peripheral, a groaning puppet picked up the amulet and placed it in her hand.
“Unfortunate,” came her answer. “I will kill you once you’ve marked my contract as fulfilled and acknowledged my win.”
How she hates him so!
It is fine.
His mouse quietly rose at the exact moment his puppet miserably returned to slouching in his seat, his head hanging in his hands, fork handle poking through his fingers.
She walked to Raphael and waited for him to show his palm as he had before.
He stared into the shadowy depths of her eyes and remembered the shining, brilliant soul that looked back at him during their dance.
She pressed the grimed amulet into his hand with her red bandaged one.
“You have your item,” his mouse said, retracting her hand. “I don’t care about your deal or your business with Kassius - I’m leaving.”
He would not stop her.
Before she took her leave, his mouse walked long ways around to a silently crying puppet and seized the neck of the more-than-half-full bottle of wine that sat before him.
“Goodbye, Kassius,” she said. “Be glad it was only the dinner fork.”
He should not have stopped her from stabbing his puppet in the face.
She strode past her chair and then paused, her body facing the entrance hall as she gave a closing look to him - he who watched.
“While I loathe this play you’ve written, I will thank you for writing me a scene to share with my Astarion. Through a loophole, we reaffirmed our love for one another; real love, the kind of love that inspires hope. The kind of love that reminds me that, at the end of this, you won’t win. And if you somehow do, be it by cheating or divine intervention, I will ensure it won’t be without sacrifice.”
The two sides of himself raged in tandem.
Loophole?
There was no such thing as a loophole - not in his contracts!
Everything was by DESIGN!
He sought to give hope that she could somehow return to her beloved! To only then tear that hope asunder!
The play was designed to ensure her loss of body, mind, and soul!
She would not win!
Not unless he allowed it!
And what a fool he would have to be to allow it…
His mouse set forth in leaving, and she raised the bloodied hand that held the bottle, her fingers forming an awkward but crude gesture in farewell.
Down the hall she went to the portal that had brought her to him, and his eyes followed her every step until she disappeared from view.
Her exit from the stage, and from this second act, was denoted by the sound of a magical burst.
Where was she going?
No, it didn’t matter; dinner went accordingly - he should leave it alone!
Would she be safe in her current state?
It shouldn’t matter…
Would she be safe from herself?
Why did it matter!
Minutes passed (how many he did not know) before his puppet dared to speak beyond his constant pathetic, whimpering. “Is it done? Is my contract fulfilled?”
Raphael’s eyes slid to Kassius after having stared down an empty hall.
“Yes, Kassius. You’ve served your purpose. But, before I mark your contract as fulfilled, and before the curtain closes on your role, I’m afraid I’m going to need you to do one final thing for me.”
“You are a rat-fu” growled the elf.
“If you are wise, you will stop there,” interjected Raphael with a growl of his own. “Your soul has not yet been returned, and I will be more than glad to rip that tongue from your mouth and eat it with the knife and fork I have here in front of me. Besides, you are becoming riled over nothing! What I am to ask is simple…”
Kassius (wisely) held his tongue.
Snap!
A contract materialized from a plume of smoke and embers, and it tauntingly floated feet away from the elf.
“Now…” Raphael’s face darkened. “Take a bow.”
Kassius’s mouth was a thin line as he pushed away from the table. He stepped over to stand in a more open area of the dining hall, and he bowed to his audience of one with trembling hands.
Raphael began to clap slowly - mockingly.
“Yes, what a performance!” He soon ceased his applause to flick his hand and an inscription of fulfillment began to blaze across the infernal parchment. “Your strings have been cut, Kassius. Do take good care of that soul of yours.”
Snap!
As the contract burned away, there was an audible sigh of relief from Kassius.
Raphael raised a brow at the mortal. “You’re going to need a portal out of here, I believe?”
Kassius glanced at him warily with one forked eye and one green eye.
“And it so happens that I need something as well,” Raphael said with a sharp smile. “I’m going to need my fork returned to me. Would you like to do the honors? Or shall I?”
There was delight to be had at Kassius’s horrified expression - a win after bearing witness to his mouse’s despondency…
“You need not make your decision now if you are not in a hurry to leave,” Raphael offered sardonically. “Haarlep does favor your company…”
Without further preamble or thought, the puppet without strings reached up, gripped the fork’s handle and yanked. A hoarse yell filled the hall as the fork was pulled out from his eye socket with an eye stuck in its prongs.
“Bra-vo, Kassius. Set it on the table, hm?”
Stilted and shaking, Kassius did as he was told.
Snap!
“The portal will take you to my den in Sharess’ Caress, but I expect you to leave it as soon as you arrive.” Raphael waited for the elf to take a step. “Oh, and one last thing, Kassius - you are never to look at or touch Tav again. If you do, it will be me who takes your other eye, and I will do more than break every finger.”
Kassius’s hands turned to fists at his side, and though it was clear he had ill-advised things to say in response, he wisely swallowed the string of words and made to leave. Around the table and down the hall he went - off to venture through the awaiting portal.
Hearing the one-eyed-elf’s exit, Raphael absently stared at the barren seat where his mouse had sat - the seat where she had openly regarded him with hatred, the seat where she had laughed and laughed…
Was she going home?
Was she safe?
His face contorted with revulsion for himself and for the sickness that his mouse had infected him with.
However much time ticked by…
“Is it over?”
Hearing Her voice and soft bare-footsteps creeping up behind him caused Raphael to dig his claws into the flesh of his palms.
“I believe I told you to shed her form when we returned, Haarlep.”
But, being a somewhat insolent incubus and a source of torment, Haarlep had not shed her form or her dress of red and gold, and they gave him a sultry smirk whilst sashaying over to take his mouse’s seat. They plopped themself down and swiftly kicked their feet up on the table.
“Hardly anyone touched their food!” Tav said as she perused the contents of the table. “Is that Kassius’s eye?”
Raphael grunted.
“Oh, why the long face, Master? We are one step closer to having our little thief, are we not?”
“Get out of her form.”
“But I aim to please, and we both know how much you do like looking at it.”
As they were entities from the Hells, they were resistant to fire, but Raphael still hoped his glare somehow burned his incubus.
“You are a tiresome, bothersome creature, and I warn you to not make me repeat myself after this: Get. Out. Of. Her. Form.”
She - no - they glowered at him, and a flash of red embers saw the glamor and dress be swapped for the usual vision of his fiendish, younger self in a leather harness.
“And you’re a bore,” Haarlep chided. “Anyways, you look downright distressed, which is all very strange considering how well the night has gone; you danced with the mouse, Astarion arrived just in time to see you dancing with her in front of everyone, and this act has left her in shambles - why, she’s ripe to fail the third act!”
“Mm,” replied Raphael, somewhat distracted.
The ache he felt had yet to dissipate.
“So? When is it? The third act? When is all of this play nonsense finally ‘put to bed’ so to speak?”
“Undetermined.”
Haarlep studied him, and after a minute, their head canted and a smile threatened their lips. “You’re not worried about her are you?”
Raphael abruptly stood - annoyed by the presence of his incubus, annoyed by everything. “You are tiresome, bothersome, and foolish, Haarlep.”
He then began to angrily stride for the entrance hall, wings rustling behind him.
“Where are you going, Master?” Haarlep called after him.
Raphael could hear the smile.
He needed to be free of the irritants (the ache) under his skin…
And he had business to attend to.
He appeared in his mouse’s bedroom with a burst, having marked the spot with infernal magic since first entering her home, and the darkvision that persisted in his mortal disguise examined the bed for her form. He expected to find her in a miserable state, wrapped up in the blanket he had provided to her (his blanket). Instead, he found a vacant bed that was cold to the touch.
The ache in his chest clenched.
Thunder boomed overhead, and a steady rain beat upon the roof.
Tav…
He scoured his brain, trying to recall any mention of her ‘preferred’ haunts that had been collected from Kassius. Raphael doubted that she would have returned to the abode of her scrawny thieve’s guild; trust was tainted there, and it was likely that she sought to be alone with her troubles. Her visits to the Devil’s Fee were nothing more than an attempt to get to him, and there was no significance to Wyrm’s Rock…
However, a place that did hold significance…
After lighting a few candles for his (and her) imminent return, Raphael vanished, choosing to teleport to another one of his marked locations within the city.
—
Helsik was there at the counter when he came down the stairs from the upper level site of the portal. She gave him a smile that nearly matched Haarlep’s in its confidence that it knew something.
“I bet Korrilla some hundred gold I’d be seeing you tonight,” she said as he marched through her shop for the door.
Raphael snarled over his shoulder at her, threw the door open, and didn’t bother closing it on his way out.
He needed to find his mouse.
He needed to ensure her safety.
He needed her whole again.
It perpetually stormed on his way to the graveyard, and when Raphael arrived, every inch of him was drenched. At first glance, as he stepped through the gated perimeter, there were no late-night visitors to be seen amongst the trees, statues, mausoleums and headstones. He stalked through the moonlit, soggy aisles of the cemetery, searching for a particular gravestone, and in finding it, Raphael happened upon a balled up body that did not belong with the dead.
The lone visitor was saturated to the bone, same as he, but where the rain and wind bothered him very little due to his infernal blood, the sad-sight-of-a-mortal was shivering, teeth chattering as she seemingly slept in her dress of emerald green.
Beside her, was an empty wine bottle and a dagger.
The ache in his chest was relieved to see no visible harm had come to her.
His weakness saw him step close and crouch down to brush his fingers across the chilled skin of her face, pushing aside wet strings of hair that clung to her forehead and cheek. She groaned, her brow pinching at the contact, but she stirred not otherwise.
“My dearest Little Mouse,” Raphael murmured. “Someone so mighty has fallen so low.”
He removed his touch to grab hold of the bottle, and with a snap of his fingers it was banished. Shifting to stand, Raphael snatched the dagger on the way up, and after a handful of seconds of quiet observation (she was always beautiful - no matter the circumstance), he gently nudged her wet form with the toe of his boot, keen on getting her home.
“Tav,” he said gruffly, nudging her a second time after getting no reaction.
The sound of her name brought her to a state of semi-wakefulness. She blinked, with eyelids he was sure felt heavy, and her eyes opened fully to the moonlit vision of his wet boots.
“Astari’n?” Tav mumbled, groggy in her drunkenness.
As he was damned by her, he would be cursed to forever know her attachment to the vampire spawn…
“Such a sad sight for the Hero of Baldur’s Gate” he said, peering down at her with disappointment written on his face. “Get up, Little Mouse.”
“Mfmmk omff,” she replied, growling as she groggily rolled over onto her side from the wet patch of grass where she lay. She curled in further on herself, shivering still.
Raphael stepped over her to remain in view.
“I said go th’fuck away!” she slurred, feeling around for her dagger.
He crouched and revealed the weapon to be in his hand.
“G’ve it back!” Tav snarled, reaching for it.
“You will have it returned to you before the night is over.”
Once he was assured she was in a more sober, predictable state…
Snap!
Her dagger disappeared.
Tav squeezed her eyes shut - a poor attempt to make him ‘go away’.
Because she could not hold her dagger, she alternatively grabbed a fistful of grass.
“I hate you, Raph’l.”
He was well-aware.
And the ache within hated the hatred she felt towards him.
Their dance… and how she had looked at him then…
Such a pretty soul.
“Get up,” Raphael repeated. “You are endangering yourself here instead of being in your home.”
“Th’bett’r for you then,” Tav grumbled. “If I somehow die, you’win. Byeee, soul…”
“Is that what you want, Little Mouse? Do you want me to win? So soon after the rousing speech you gave?”
“Dosn’t matter what I want…”
“It matters to me.”
“Liar!” she growled, eyes flying open. “You don’t care!”
Silence, then a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder.
He shouldn’t care…
But the truth was…
“Get up, or I will carry you.”
“You won’ fuckin’ touch me,” Tav bit out, fumbling around for the wine bottle, which was, of course, gone.
Her stubbornness was as charming as much as it was infuriating.
“I will,” he asserted. “And you are in no state to stop me.”
Raphael reached for her, and Tav rolled over once more, this time onto her knees as she began to ineptly crawl away from him in her soaked dress, water dripping from her hair and into her eyes.
He gave a slow chase. “Really, Little Mouse. This is pathetic - where is your dignity?”
“Hate you…” Tav mumbled, reminding him.
“Then use your hatred to at least stand,” Raphael said harshly, gripping her by the elbow and making her.
He did not let her go as Tav stared at him with drunk contempt.
“Meetin’ you was’a mistake,” she ground out.
“No, my dear,” Raphael replied, voice heavy with conviction. “It was fate.”
A truth!
“Well, fate kin’fuck off with you,” Tav said, wrenching her arm from him. She took a few swaying steps for the gate, and he joined her, close at her side. “I’m goin’ home, issn’ that what’you wan’id? Now, leave me ‘lone!”
In another effort to get away from him, she careened into a puddle and tripped over her feet.
Before she could fall, Raphael caught her by the arm, and pulled her to him as he summoned teleportation magick to bring her home.
Tav glowered at him, trembling in her drenched attire.
“Ass.”
“‘Thank you’ is what I think your intoxicated brain means to say,” Raphael corrected, pleased to see that she was not so shattered; the pieces were there but needed to be mended.
“I’m gonna kill you,” Tav said, taking her arm back again.
She suddenly sneezed at his boots.
She was ill.
Raphael smiled thinly at her before he crossed the room to her bed and found the knife from under the third pillow he lifted - another weapon he would not allow her to drunkenly wield.
“Yes, and you will have your opportunity in the future,” he said, slipping the knife into his boot. He casually positioned himself to half sit on her bedside table, the bedside table where want and need had enthralled them. “For now, take off your dress.”
“Th’ hells I will, devil! Thissis my house! I d’mand you leave!” Tav glanced to where her second dagger sat in its holster at the foot of her dresser.
“Try it, Little Mouse. Or, make this easy for yourself, and take off your dress so that you do not get further ill. I will only allow for the third act to commence when you are hale and whole; body, mind, and soul.”
It took her a minute to process, but she began to grope at the backside of her bodice, and he watched her discover that her impaired condition was making it difficult - to the point of needing assistance.
Who better to help than he?
A smile played on his lips.
Tav glared at him. “Give me m’knife.”
“No,” he answered flatly.
“I don’t wanna owe you ‘nthin’...” she mumbled, eying him warily.
Raphael went ahead and sauntered over to her, a truth on his tongue. “My dear, it would be a gift to undress you.”
“Fine, help me,” Tav said, her concession coming out as a demand. “But don’ touch nothin’ else but the dress…”
He gave her a devilish smile as he breezed around to her back. His hands, though desiring to touch and warm her skin, behaved as they slowly began to undo her bodice.
He felt her tense.
“Don’ stab me ‘gain…”
The plea gave him pause - a realization that her feelings of betrayal went beyond Kassius.
She had foolishly grown to sincerely trust him - a devil.
His hands resumed, and once the bodice was loosened, Tav clumsily freed her arms from the sleeves before the dress pooled at her feet. Raphael could not prevent himself from eying the naked skin of her back, and, evidently feeling his heated gaze, his mouse instinctively covered her naked breasts with an arm as she next kicked off her boots and sloppily undid her dagger holster, leaving her in nothing but underwear and foot wraps.
Being a nearby place of warmth and comfort, Tav teetered over to her bed. She stripped it of his blanket, made a cocoon for herself and gracelessly flopped onto her stomach within the center of the mattress.
Fondness caused the corners of his lips to twitch.
Raphael knew she did not want him anywhere near her if it could be helped - but it could not be helped.
Her hand needed tending to.
He stepped over to her bed and sat beside the blanketed log of red and gold.
“We are not done yet,” he said.
“What now?” came Tav’s muffled groan.
“Your hand.”
“S’fine.”
Stubborn woman!
“No, it is not,” he affirmed.
“I won’ let youmanip’late me to thinkin’ you care. I know th’truth.”
Did she know?
Did she truly know how she affected him?
“What is the truth, Little Mouse?”
“Tha’ you hate me jussas much as I hate you.”
Raphael hummed.
She was not wrong - and yet...
“What makes you so certain of this truth?”
“Mmm, why else wou’dyou wanna hurt me so much?”
The truth that it was her heist (her betrayal) that conceived the stage play and birthed his desire to punish and harm her would be saved for the third act, and the Archdevil Supreme would not allow his lesser half to admit the truth that hurting her now caused him suffering as well.
“Give me your hand, Little Mouse,” he gently said.
“Manners.”
“Please.”
Tav awkwardly adjusted in her cocoon and offered the hand he requested, wet kerchief loose and soiled.
He shifted his position on the mattress to acclimate, and Raphael did his best to ignore his mouse’s quiet crying as he carefully began to undo the knot Kassius had tied at the ball. The kerchief fell away to expose the angry, bloody cuts across her palm and fingers.
Snap!
He gingerly placed her hand in his lap and grabbed a cloth, potion bottle and gauze from where they floated in the air to set them down upon the bedside table. Once the stopper was pried away from the glass mouth and the cloth prepped, Raphael returned to cradling her hand. There was minor flinching and hissing from his patient as he ran the potion-soaked cloth over the red cuts of various lengths and depths that decorated her palm.
He cleaned until satisfied with his work, and Raphael then moved onto dressing her hand with a fresh bandage. When the wound came to be snugly wrapped and tied off, he knew not what drove him to bring his lips to brush across her gauze covered knuckles.
He let her go and stood.
Snap!
A silver stand of ripe fruit from dinner was summoned to her bedside table.
“Eat when you are able,” Raphael said.
“Mmmhm,” Tav said, drawing her hand into her cocoon. “Raph’l?”
“Hm?”
“Don’ tell th’bards…” she sleepily mumbled.
His head tilted with interest and amusement. “And what am I refraining from telling the bards, my Little Mouse?”
“How much of’n ‘diot I’m… for…” He heard a yawn. “Fallin’n love with'a devil…”
Breath left him as he was fed the truth.
His mouse - his Tav - had fallen in love with a devil?
With him?
Swallowing the truth saw the ache in his chest evaporate, and his blood became a wildfire in his veins. Her confession of love filled him with a euphoria that was unknown and foreign, and Raphael, who craved a great many things, found himself temporarily sated. Gone was the bitterness he tasted at having caused her pain; a saccharine aftertaste lingered on his tongue - it was because of the pain inflicted by this second act that the truth was revealed!
The Wheel of Fate had set them on this course…
And she-who-came-to-love-him would be his come the third act!
But… he began to wonder…
Had the play not been written, had the circumstances and moments they shared been different…
Would she have ever considered giving herself and her love to a devil freely - without a signature and the failure of a contract?
The ambitious Archdevil Supreme cared not; he would own her soon - and no other would have her! The mouse who loved him as much as she hated him! A better, more passionate and compelling combination than the ordinary love she felt for others…
The love she felt for Astarion…
That forever love…
How did her love for Astarion compare to the love she felt for him?
Ah, it does not matter!
She’ll be his!
Raphael blinked, ending the war with himself as he stared at the sleeping bundle of his mouse who was swathed in his blanket.
In two steps he was at the dresser, and he snatched the partially burned blanket that belonged to a bygone couple. He held it in a death grip as hellfire caught at the end. Flames spread, moving up the material to lick a hand that was resistant to its path of destruction. Raphael’s expression turned fiendish as the blanket turned to nothing, and he was fine with the knowledge that Tav would hate him for getting rid of the keepsake…
Because she loved him as much as she hated him, and the more she hated him…
With all traces of the lesser blanket gone, Raphael blew out the candles he had earlier lit, and he went to station himself in the back corner to watch over his Tav (and be at war with himself) while she slept.
Her secret was safe with him; he would not tell the bards that she had fallen in love with a devil.
He couldn’t.
For if he did, the bards would insightfully be able to glean the truth that the devil, too, had fallen in love.