Fresh Meat - BlackjackKent - Baldur's Gate (Video Games) [Archive of Our Own] (2024)

Sweat trickles down her spine, pools at the base of her neck. It's so f*cking hot in Avernus, like being buried in the depths of a coal fire. It matches the burning in her chest, the boiling in her guts. She fidgets her weight from one leg to the other, back and forth, as if that’d somehow ease the volcanic pressure behind each pneumatic pulse of molten blood in her veins.

“I said ATTENTION!” Legate Jastor pauses in his inspection of his troops and halts in front of her, bellowing in her face. The pit fiend’s pale red eyes are filled with disdainful loathing. “I don't care if you’re Zariel's new pet, Cliffgate; you'll hold still when you're told!” He lifts a hand and cuffs her in a vicious backhand slap across the face.

She squeezes her eyes shut, forcing herself not to react to the pain. Easier than it should be, really, because everything else hurts too. Her chest hurts and her head hurts. The exhaust vents along her shoulders burn with searing chemical heat. The bruising sting of the slap disappears, swallowed up by the inferno.

“Yes, sir,” she grinds out.

This isn't real, some part of her brain still stubbornly insists. No f*cking way this is real. I'm dreaming. Gonna wake up any second and go see Gortash and laugh - hey, boss, you'll never guess the sh*t I dreamed you did to me!

It can't be real, that he betrayed her, after everything they've been through together. It can't be real that she’s on another plane in the fires of the Hells themselves. It can't be real that she met the Archdevil of Avernus, and the bitch cut out her heart.

It can't be real. It can't be real. It can't be real. It's not real.

She opens her eyes again and stares into Jastor's smirking, grotesque face. His breath stinks of brimstone as he laughs. “Fidgety little f*ck, aren't you, Dart? We'll fix that soon enough.”

Big words, bug-ugly, when you know I could beat the sh*t out of you, Karlach thinks bitterly. Zariel put her through all sorts of tests after the engine was in, and she passed every single one. Whatever the f*ck they did to her, it made her powerful, that's for sure.

But what's the point? The whole legion’d turn on her, and they'd rip her to shreds, and she wants to live. Damn it, she still wants to live…

Jastor stares daggers into her. It takes every bit of her remaining self-control not to fidget again. She was always moving in the city, always bouncing a leg when she had to stand guard, always dancing to the music in her head. It’s so different here. Regimented. Cold, which is real f*cking ironic. They want her to stand still, obey orders, ask how high when they tell her to jump.

And kill, of course.

Even young as she is, she's killed before, a handful of times when it was the only way to keep her boss safe. But she never much liked it, and luckily most of the time she didn't have to; usually a little roughing up and the threat of worse was enough to get Gortash's enemies to fall in line and pay their dues.

But this is different. This is an army, and killing is their business. Demons, mostly, though it’s pretty clear that if Zariel decides she needs someone else dead, that person had better die. Trying to object is just a recipe for being next on the list. Karlach's only been here a week and already the blood on her hands could fill a swimming pool.

She hates it. She hates all of it, and everyone that put her here. She hates it with a rage that makes the engine roar in her chest and flames dance over her skin.

It’s better this way. If the anger stops, the fear will wake up.

“Yes, sir,” she mutters again between her teeth.

For a moment she thinks the pitter is gonna hit her again anyway, just for the fun of it, but he just laughs again instead, spewing another wave of sulfur-scented breath. “Right. Legion, FALL OUT!” he barks.

It’s the signal to make camp, and the soldiers around her immediately loosen up, starting to disperse out of their orderly lines into little clumps. All the same, Karlach holds herself rigid as a statue until Jastor has walked away. Only when the pit fiend has disappeared to the far end of the hordes of devils does she let herself exhale and relax even a little.

After the day’s forced march, they’ve halted on a pretty uninspiring strip of Avernus wasteland, nothing but flat and red-tinged rock in all directions. Maybe she’s already starting to think like a soldier, a bit, because she feels acutely aware of the lack of cover. Exposed. Vulnerable.

A couple of kytons from her platoon sit down nearby, digging ration containers out of their packs. Cautiously, she turns toward them, offering a careful smile. "Pretty bleak place, huh?" she says with an attempt at cheeriness. "Boss really mean to have us sleeping out here?"

The three devils stare at her in withering silence broken only by the howling wind around them. Then one of them, the oldest - a grey-skinned fellow wearing a centurion's bars on his shroud of chains- screws up his face deliberately and spits at her feet. The saliva sizzles where it hits the rock.

"Piss off, Dart," the man next to him says with comfortable cruelty.

She retreats, feeling a prickle of shame and despair up her back. She considers trying again with another knot of several soldiers further on - but she can already see the looks they're giving her. Disdain. Dislike.

"Careful, fresh meat." A voice at her elbow makes her jump. A cambion's standing there - a tall, lithe, green-eyed woman with broad, leathery wings. She looks Karlach up and down, absently winding a long strip of magically-infused rope around her fingers. Then she smiles unpleasantly. "Friendly ones are always the first for a beating."

"Florenta, right?" Karlach says warily. She remembers an earlier battle, watching this woman wrap that rope around a demon's neck and twist until its head came off. "That what you're here for, then?"

"Nah." The Garroter smirks. "Just offering a bit of advice. Think you've got potential, so I'd hate to see someone rip your tit* off too soon. Besides, you're Zariel's little project, so it'd piss her off. Nobody's happy when the Archdevil en't happy."

"Ah." Karlach shifts uncomfortably. "Thanks. I think."

Florenta jerks her head and her smile widens, showing all of her teeth. "Better get some rest, Dart. Really will beat you if you slow us down come dawn."

She gives Karlach a rough punch in the shoulder, turns, and walks away. Karlach watches her go, rubbing absently at the place where the fist struck her. It's the first time anyone’s touched her since her heart was cut out.

Slowly she retreats away from the rest of the legion, avoiding the staring malevolent eyes and subtle mocking laughter. After some searching, she finds a quiet spot in the shadow of a large boulder at the edge of the encampment. No tents, not for the axe grunts like her, but at least the rock provides limited protection from the abrasive dust-laden wind.

Lacking a pillow or bedroll, she stretches out uncomfortably on the stone ground, resting her head on her pack. Get some sleep, Karlach, she instructs herself firmly. Shut it all out. Think about something nice. Think about home. No-- wait, not home. Don't-- don't cry. No. Stop it. Stop...

The tears leak out gently from beneath her closed eyelids, drying almost instantly in the brutally hot air. She curls into herself, burying her face in her arms.

Around her are hundreds and hundreds of people, a legion of Zariel's forces, and yet she feels more alone than she has ever felt in her life. Maybe she'd held onto some scrap of hope that she could make friends here, find something worthwhile even in this charbroiled hellscape… but no.

No one here looks at her and sees Karlach Cliffgate of Baldur's Gate, loyal right hand of the Gortash weapons cartel. All they see is an interloper in their realm, a fresh-meat kid not even damned yet, who they'd beat to a pulp if it wouldn't piss off their boss. They hate her just as much as she hates them.

And why shouldn’t they? She hates herself, too. No matter how hard she tried, Gortash didn't think she was worth keeping, and now she’s been changed. Mutilated, ripped apart, her heart torn from her chest and replaced with a f*cking machine. She’s a monster, a weapon, all metal and flame. And if the devils have their way, she’ll be here forever to kill and kill and kill and kill…

"I want to go home..." she whispers. It's so quiet it barely even reaches her own ears, but even so, she curls even further into herself, burying the words so they're whispered only to her engine heart. "I want to go home. I want to go home. Please... please..." Then, even quieter, full of shame and terror. "Mum... Dad... I miss you... please come take me home..."

She starts to shiver uncontrollably, despite the oppressive heat around her. The engine whirs like the growl of an angry beast. And shaking with unvoiced sobs, muffled so the predators in all directions will not hear her and pounce, she drifts into another sleep in hell, punctuated with the stab of restless dreams.

-----

“Hey. Hey? Karlach? Shh… shhh, it's all right…”

Ten years later, she stirs, making an anxious, uncertain noise, her eyes flickering half-open as she squirms in the grip of dark images in her mind. Her face is wet with tears, and at first the soft voice in her ear sounds foreign and impossible.

“It’s all right, my love. A bad dream. You can wake up…”

She opens her eyes. Hector lies next to her, watching her in the darkness of the tent, his grey eyes narrowed with concern. Cautiously he reaches out one hand so his fingertips brush her cheek. “There you are…” he murmurs. “Come on back to me…”

She’s still shivering violently, just as she was on that night so long ago. “Oh, Hells…” she mutters shakily. “This is real, right? Tell me this is real.”

He opens his arms to her. She surges into them without hesitation, burying her face in his chest, and he wraps around her, tight and strong. The heat of his body melds with the beautiful chill of the air, which is still and silent and smells of damp grass.

“It’s real,” he murmurs into her hair. “It’s real, and I’m here.”

Her hands press against his chest, squeezed between her body and his. She focuses on the rough friction of the fabric of his shirt, the comforting sound of his heartbeat - not a metallic screech like hers but real living blood pumping through him. Thump. Thump. Thump.

She starts to breathe again.

“I… I was back there… back when it all started,” she mumbles. “Real early days… first night sleeping out on route march… first night I realized how alone I was. That no one would ever touch me again, or care if I lived. That I was never going home…”

He slides his fingers into her hair, pulling her tighter against him, and in spite of his much smaller frame, his embrace feels like a blanket, comforting and safe. “You didn’t know then that I was waiting for you,” he says softly. The low rumble of his voice resonates through her body. “You didn’t know there were better days ahead…”

She tries to laugh and can’t quite manage it. The sound is wet and pathetic, muffled into his tunic. “Gods, I was so scared,” she mutters. “So lonely. So f*cking young…” His fingers dig into her back and she braces against the grip, her voice steadying. “Was only later that I learned to… I dunno. Split my mind off. So there was a part of me that was the Demonsbane, and part of me that was me, and the Demonsbane was angry all the time so the rest of me wouldn’t be afraid. But back then… it was all just me, and it hurt so bad…” She swallows. “How the f*ck did I make it through?”

“You were strong,” he says softly. “You shouldn’t have had to be. But you were, and you are. And you made it here, in the end, and we’re going to take you home.”

The Gate is only a few miles off now. If she stepped out of the tent, she’d be able to see the silhouette of it on the horizon, and yet it feels almost as unreal as the dream. “You promise?” she asks. Plaintively, pleading like that kid she used to be.

“I promise.” He tips his head downwards so his lips brush against her forehead. “And no matter what, that’s all over now. I’m here. Whatever lies ahead, you’ll never be alone and scared like that, not ever again.”