The Quiet
After

Six months after the Absolute's fall, the camp's silence is a weight we carry separately. Then Astarion shows up at my doorstep in Baldur's Gate, rain-soaked and hollow-eyed, and I let him in without a word. That night he fucks me like he's still terrified I'll vanish — his hands desperate, his mouth pressed against my skin with murmured confessions I've never heard before. I hold him through the worst of the memories afterward, and in the dark he admits he doesn't know how to live without a purpose. I tell him we'll invent one together. For the first time since the brain died, the future feels possible.