It's empty in the valley of your heart

[tadpoled]

WHO: Tav and you!
WHAT: Gardening and cursing
WHEN: Post-murdery episode, Drakonis
WHERE: The up-and-coming gardens
NOTES: Mentions of past murders

A.

Since waking up bound inside his room in the Gallows, Tav knows what happened. The only blood that covered his hands came from the intense chafing of his wrists, but looking up into the faces of those who guarded him while he cursed and swore and wished for their deaths in the early dawn light will never be something he forgets. He continues to follow protocol, but he loses himself in building the garden. Sprigs dance to life beneath his fingers, unlike the heart of Alfira, forever sliced open with her own horn. Lattices take shape along the stone walls and ivys climb along each until they reach up into the sky.

He remembers Gale, asleep before him as his control slipped. Here now, too, he'd found to keep control, but found himself too weak to whatever powers that be. No matter the distance from home, no matter the distance from Astarion, Gale, Lae'zel, Karlach, and the rest, this is one curse he simply cannot escape. The conversations with others seem to have lost their levity as well, and he has no courage to strike up new ones.

Tav sets himself to digging a small pond for the lotuses, blood and black. His hands tear when they strike stones or twigs, but he doesn't stop. No, there is no stopping for a monster like him. His very presence puts the rest of the Riftwatch in danger. He lifts his muddied hands, recalls when they were coated in Alfira's blood and sits back on his heels, shoulders rolled forward.

"Fuck," he murmurs to himself.

B.

At some point in the process of creating the pond, Tav knows he must retrieve the water himself. He has no magic to create water or otherwise expedite the damp air into rain. So he collects a bucket from his collection of tools and heads into the Gallows proper to fill said bucket. Once, twice, thrice. The progress is slow, as each bucketful seems to be soaked up by the dirt almost immediately. Tav huffs, but he continues his labors, moving in and out of the Gallows with a frown as he works.