Chapter Text
I wish I could say it ended differently. If I knew then what I knew now...it's easy to believe I'd change in a heartbeat. Ideally, the gift of hindsight would permit such clemency. One would think themself smart enough to avoid disaster when they learned their lesson. However, if I were honest, I don't trust myself—and I shouldn't.
After all we've been through, I swore to kill her. With all my failures in life, there's a piece of me that hoped I'd crash in this mission too—but I've changed. For better or worse.
It is rare to find a person whose soul cuts deep to your very being. In 134 years, I've met only one. Elves can endure a millennium, and the value of each life who touched ours becomes rather unremarkable. Someday, this will be just another tragedy, when I'm in my deathbed reflecting on all my mistakes, triumphs, loves, and losses: a canvas of a life well-lived.
For now, I breathe. The nostalgia of my adventures with unlikely friends is a persistent, dull ache. I still speak to them, enjoy each other's company as we once did. We share stories, laughter, dreams of gathering the old crew together for another quest. Something less world-changing and as much monster slaying, excitement without the stakes. Two years ago, it was fun to entertain such fantasies. Now it's hollow. When we talk, there's a moment when a melancholic silence falls, and we sit in the somberness. What unsettles me are their looks of pity, like they're staring at a stain in my soul. They do not mean to shame, but I feel it anyway.
Shadowheart was good. It was apparent the moment I met her. I was so harsh then, accusing her of trickery when I rescued her from the pod. It's only funny looking back, how one moment we were so desperate to survive then the next we return to old rivalries. So trivial when threatened by death, but religion bakes pettiness into your bones. Neither of us could help it. None of our companions could either. We were all tempted to succumb to the habits that form us. Gale, seeking the approval of a goddess who did not love him; Karlach, lashing out violently because it was the only way she was taught to manage pain; Astarion, fighting the nature of his bloodlust; Wyll, hiding the shame of his infernal pact; Lae'zel, reinforcing the prejudices of her people. It was a breath of fresh air when Jaheira joined us, and even she had her demons.
It took me far too long to accept Shadowheart as she was. We often imagine ourselves heroes, yet when the time comes, we falter. She was tested over and over again, yet an uncorrupted sliver of her remained. It should've been impossible, considering what she's been through, the forces that puppeteer the strings of her life. She was, in every sense of the word, admirable.
I once held no sympathy for those in the dark. For all the ways it can be justified, useful, a consequence of happenstance, evil is still evil, and like everything in the universe, it comes at a price. When that price is death, however, dealt by your hand to a person for whom you cared deeply, the only stain left is your own.
We are embodied contradictions, all of us. The most virtuous and the most vile are painfully boring, for they exist in a plane where nothing could challenge them. Us mortals must struggle in our morality. There's hardly anything in this world that is purely good and purely evil. If there are any, I can think of none. The goal of morality is not to achieve perfection. Nothing in life is. Instead, we must bend the world toward the light as much as possible.
I sometimes wonder if it was worth it. When I pray every night and receive Her blessings, I take it as a sign. The Moonmaiden does not demand apologies on her behalf. Pointless for a goddess of perpetual change. She blesses the ones whose paths are righteous. We ask for guidance because more often than not we are lost. I'll trust her judgement when I cannot trust mine.
This I pray forever and always.