So she walked until they were out of earshot of the others, and there she found their leader, seated curled in on herself on top of a rock, body shaking with her heavy sobs.
"I really wish I could hug you right now," Karlach said as she sat down next to her. Sara raised her head to that, and Karlach thought she might have even been trying to smile, but she couldn't. "Anything else I can try?"
It was maybe a minute before Sara could get herself even to speak. "Sing for me?" she asked. "Just a little?"
"Don't think I'm any sort of virtuoso there, but okay," said Karlach, and she started singing, softly and gently as she could. As she sung, Sara's sobs slowly quieted. "Sorry I'm not better at that."
"You don't have to be," Sara managed, her voice still thick. "I was just glad to hear you, you know. Besides, you should get to go around singing all you want no matter how good or terrible you are at it. You've earned that. You've earned so much."
"That's nice of you," Karlach replied. "And don't feel bad, you know, about breaking down like this. I'd be amazed if none of us have in our tents."
"I don't know how you do it, you know," said Sara. "Well, I know you're not upbeat and happy all of the time, but you still seem to take so much joy in everything."
"Believe me," said Karlach, "it's not always easy. "And it helps to think that literally anything that could be ahead of me, even death, would be better than what's behind. I wouldn't expect most of you have that kind of comfort."
There was more she could've said then, had she been ready. But it had been too long and too hard a pair of days, and there wasn't much point in burdening Sara with more pain and grief that she really couldn't do anything about. She'd tell her the rest someday, maybe, if they both lived to see this ordeal over.
After a brief silence, Sara spoke again. "I've never been all that religious. When I was young, my tribe did festive rites in tribute to some of the gods. A feast for Silvanus during one season, for Lathander in another, that sort of thing. I'm afraid most of the people I knew who did individual worship prayed to Malar...yet even so, I've always thought the gods to, in general, be a good thing, even if some of them were evil." She actually looked a little guilty as she added, "I suppose I've been lucky, to never be affected by the evil ones. Not like you've been."
"Honestly?" said Karlach. "The gods have always kind of been background noise for me, too. I suppose the evil ones are ultimately to blame for what happened to me, but it was their subordinates who actually did everything, them and other lower-downs. I certainly wouldn't want to hear directly from any god at all, mind."
"Then you have more sense than many," Sara sighed. "But surely people shouldn't have to go through what you did to learn that lesson. And when any god tells someone that they want them dead, surely, at the very least, they shouldn't worship them anymore. It's evil, to demand that kind of sacrifice. Why can't they see? Why can't either of them see?" Fresh tears fell as she nearly wailed the question.
"Either of them," said Karlach. "So you mean Lae'zel, too?"
"She still won't face it. And she even said to me tonight, just like the rest of you, that she knows Mystra isn't doing it because she really believes there's no other way. And then promptly insisted to me that Vlaakith isn't like that, oh no, she says, Vlaakith's still doing right by her people. And when I do think Vlaakith's the more evil of the two of them. But I don't know which one of them I hate more right now. At least Vlaakith's condemning Lae'zel wasn't anything personal on her part, not really."
"What happened, exactly?" Karlach asked. "Yes, you guys have told me, but it was more than that, wasn't it?"
"The machine," Sara said, her voice low with her rage. "The one she so eagerly jumped into, so sure it would fix everything. We all three of us felt exactly what it did to her. And we couldn't do anything. I even tried to use the parasite, and was left to wonder if maybe had I listened to our astral friend and gotten stronger with it, maybe I could have, but if she hadn't intervened...and there was that doctor, all excited words and pushing her, oh, was I glad to spill her blood later, and I knew right then. I didn't even need anything else that happened in that place to tell me anything.
And that creche in general. To think she grew up like that. It wasn't even how brutal they were. It was how expendable she was. How expendable they all were."
"That's a common trait, I'm afraid," said Karlach. "I certainly witnessed it. Sometimes I thought myself lucky that I was so valuable to Zariel. Though, really, I think I was more unlucky that way."
"Even now?" Sara asked. "Even when it means you lived to escape?"
"Well, I'm certainly not sorry for that part." Karlach herself had to pause a moment, her next thought almost too painful to voice. "But I can't help but think, sometimes, of those who died instead, when they might now be me had Zariel not been so reckless with them, and maybe their chances of not dying would be higher, what with having their own original hearts."
"Please..." Sara started, now looking even more dismayed. "You...you can't..."
"If it makes you feel better," Karlach tried, "it does also make me more determined to enjoy the freedom I've gotten. I mean, someone should, and if it's got to be me..."
Sara placed her hand very near Karlach's, an obvious statement that she would've taken it if she could have. "I honor you for it, then. Sometimes I think you're the best of us all, though honestly, that's very much between you and Wyll."
Karlach would've laughed at that, had she not then continued, "Did any of Lae'zel's fellow soldiers, the ones she lived and fought with, did any of them care about her at all? They clearly weren't supposed to. I think that's what truly makes a god evil, when they demand you care only about them, devote yourself to them and noone else. I don't even know how I feel about those who demand you love noone else as much as you love them. Are we the first people in Lae'zel's life to say to her, 'No, you are important'?"
"Too much devotion to the powerful in general is probably a dangerous thing," Karlach observed, thinking very much about what had happened to her because of it, but only adding, "as we can even see with these cultists.
Still, at least we all care about her now. Though Astarion would probably deny it if you asked him."
"We need to help her," said Sara. "If we can only figure out how. Or just how to get her to let us."
"We can't force her to let us," Karlach gently told her. "She has to decide to let us."
"I know," she said, though she again looked even more unhappy.
"And don't feel guilty, either," Karlach added, after another moment's thought, "that you can't give her what she wants from you. None of us can help who we fall in love with."
"I thought I might, you know, at first," Sara said, almost to herself. "When we met on that ship. When we were just two women fighting fiercely for our lives together, and why shouldn't we want each other? I imagine she's still in that same mindset. But when I look at her now? All I can think is how young she is."
"Well," Karlach chuckled, "don't tell her that."
"Oh, I know how she'd respond. We all heard what she said to Gale, when he talked about those two children that bitch doctor brought with her, that we had to kill. Because she's wrong; they were children. So what if they'd fought before? So what if they'd even killed? Thanks to the way things went with my tribe during my first century, I wielded my ax for longer than she's been alive before I actually became an adult. It takes more than just that."
"You don't think she's a child, do you? Though I suppose if she is, she's having to grow up fast."
Sara actually had to consider, this, but after a minute, she said, "Not in the way those two were, not quite. But there's still so much she doesn't know yet."
"And what about you?" Karlach asked. "Actually, is it rude to ask an elf their age? Someone once told me it was, but...come to think of it, he probably made up a lot of stuff."
"I'm 279," said Sara. "Old enough to be older than the majority of the people I meet nowadays. Though I don't always feel so much older than them, not the way I used to, before I hit the two and a half-century mark, ironically, when being older than so many people still felt new."
"So you wouldn't be bothered by getting involved with Gale on those grounds? He's definitely not young, not really."
She regretted the jest when Sara's tears, which had finally stopped, started again at that. "I am so, so sorry, that was so stupid of me."
"It's all right," Sara said, hastily wiping away the newest tears. "I suppose I've given it away to everyone now. Maybe even Elminster, though how he could have asked me to just escort Gale to his death like that..."
"I think we all knew how you feel about each other already," Karlach told her. "You've neither of you been hiding it."
"No," Sara said softly, again almost to herself, "he hasn't either, has he?"
It made sense, Karlach thought, that she might still be insecure over Gale's affections. Nobody expected a wizard of his sophistication to take interest in a simple tribeswoman, not with the way the class of them seemed to scorn people like them in general. Yet anyone with eyes could see that Gale had. And he was a good man, better than Karlach would've expected a wizard to be.
Then the next thing she said was, "When Elminster first spoke of this so-called redemption from Mystra, my first thought was 'If he can get her to take him back, he'll forget all about me.' And I wouldn't have even blamed him. Of course he'd choose his goddess lover over me. Except now, hearing the rest of it? I'm starting to wonder if maybe I've gotten it all wrong, about him and her."
"You really thought..." How much could her insecurities have blinded Sara to? "Did you even hear how he spoke, the moment her name came up? It seemed pretty clear to me he wasn't glad to hear it at all. And I think he was the only one of us who wasn't at all surprised when we heard what she wanted him to do. That wasn't a man who wanted his ex back. That was a man who was terrified of her."
"And yet he still worships her. I've even seen him conjure images of her at night. And he still believes what the rest of us immediately recognized to be hogs wash." She shook her head. "At least now I can want him to choose me with a clean conscience. I can wish for him to having nothing to do with her out of more than just jealousy. But that won't be much comfort if I can't save him. And I can't really make that choice for him, in the end. I can't for either of them."
"Sucks, doesn't it?" Karlach agreed. "But we can at least harangue him about it, right? Or," she grinned, "you can offer him a little something Mystra won't anymore that he might just want to stick around for. After all, he doesn't have to worry about setting that orb off accidentally anymore, and well, that means he can do a few things he didn't want to risk trying, right?"
And that got a smile from Sara at least, albeit a weak one. "That thought actually has crossed my mind. But I don't know how to talk to him about it right now. It's probably not a conversation for tonight, anyway."
"Nope. Instead I bet we'll hear from our dream visitor. I was kind of surprised she didn't show up last night."
"Well, she does like to appear to all of us at once, and I doubt Lae'zel would've welcomed her. She might have even tried to kill her herself. Never mind that a major reason I believed her over Vlaakith was because I knew the latter was lying to Lae'zel, and was also *hurting* her. Then again, I suppose the whole scene wouldn't have happened at all, if Lae'zel hadn't pushed us up to that point, and that's the only part of that she's cared to realize.
Foolish creature." Sara's voice turned hard. "I'm starting to think that whoever she is, she's just another one of those powerful people expecting us to do exactly as she says. But she should know I'm not going to Moonrise Towers for her. We're going there to get rid of our parasites, and to rescue Wyll's father-though only because Wyll wants us to, that duke is only getting our help on the say-so of the son he disowned, and now I'm staying with Gale to try to get him not to blow himself up. And you, too. I'm also staying on this road with you at least until we get to wherever Dammon is right now. We may have to do what a few powerful people want, but let's not do it for them."
"Hear, hear," Karlach agreed. There was a sentiment she could absolutely get behind. A bunch of such sentiments, in fact.
"I suppose we'll still have to take her advice for a while, at least to a point." Sara rose to her feet, and tried to put her disheveled hair back in order, though there wasn't much that could be done about her reddened face. "We'd better get back."
It was strange, how quickly Karlach had gotten used to not only following after this woman, when she'd still only know her for days, but how glad she was to do so. But she knew why, especially now. She couldn't remember the last time someone had not only cared for her, but had done so with the ferocity with which Sara Tully clearly cared for them all. From what she had gathered about the others, she was pretty sure she wasn't the only one either.
Then again, it didn't have to be just Sara. Karlach took in the scene when they arrived back at camp. Wyll was talking avidly with Halsin about something, while Shadowheart sat nearby and listened. Lae'zel was doing her nightly workout, maybe with a little too much intensity. Astarion was being bothered by Volo, but actually seemed willing to talk to him at the moment. Gale was sitting with Scratch, idly stroking the dog's fur. It was easy for her own affection for all her new friends to well up inside her. It hadn't only been too long since anyone had cared about her; it had been too long since she'd had anyone to care about.
They should all come to love each other, she decided. They could fight for each other, and hopefully save each other, and maybe also the world, too-but that had better happen without any of them sacrificing themselves. It would be each other in the end for each of them, and that would make it worth it. Yes, she knew, some of them might not be willing to go for her idea right now, especially with regards to some of the others, but that was okay. They'd be glad, in the end, if it happened anyway, and it very well could.