Continuing his examination, Pom stretches one wing carefully, feeling the musculature. It sure feels as though it belongs there, and moves like it, too. He remembers when his tail suddenly remained after Shifting, and wonders if it's a similar situation. He looks back to Gale to keep talking, only for his gaze to land on the back of the other man's head for a moment too long.
With the wing still in one hand, he reaches to brush a couple of fingers against what he is certain had once been feathers in Gale's hair, tips where they came to a point almost like ears. There's fur there now, solid skin.
Gale shivers again, but this time it has less to do with the temperature.
That 'huh' makes him slap a hand to his head, feeling for the cause of it.
It isn't difficult to find. "Ears?" He blurts. "Owlbears certainly don't
have ears like this." There's a touch of rising panic in his voice at the
thought that his body is undergoing more changes, becoming uglier, more
monstrous. He reaches over his shoulder, grabbing and feeling his own wings
roughly, like their appearance is a further offense. It occurs to him that
it wouldn't be difficult to rip them off.
Though he removes his hand as Gale slaps at his new ears, Pom recognizes the shift in his tone, the way he grabs at his wings. He's been there himself a number of times, lying awake at night, clawing at his own scales along his sides, trying to stay human by forcibly removing that which isn't. It never helps.
"Hey. Hey!"
He lets go of the wing and steps in front of Gale, taking his hands and pulling them away. "You gotta be careful. You might break the feathers."
But he knows that's not what Gale is concerned about, so he tries again after a beat.
"It's probably the city, you know? It does weird stuff to us Augmented. I mean, look at me."
"Break the feathers," Gale repeats with scorn, though not for Pom. "What does it matter? They're not good for anything." He can't see them well over his shoulder, but that tells him that they're small, nowhere near big enough for even gliding. Stupid useless wings. Eli had helped him cut off his useless extra digits, why not be rid of these as well?
"Kelesis does do weird things to us..." He doesnt mention that he thinks what it does is show them their futures their inevitable selves. "But at least it doesn't torture us."
He looks from the filling tub to the bandages that can't stay on his hands if he's going to get in. Sighing, he decides that they may as well have nothing hidden between them and starts to unwrap them. His arms are a horror. Those black lines creep down them from his chest, particularly the left one. His hands are gnarled with scar tissue from fingers removed and regrown again and again and again. The putrid black boils that mark arcane radiation circle the orb on his chest like stars in a spiral galaxy, radiating out and over his arms. He curls his lip in disgust at everything he's been hiding. "Guess wings and ears aren't so bad in comparison, hm?"
Pom wants to argue, but is left wordless at the sight of Gale's arms. Free of their bandages, he can see them in full, truly take in not only what the city has done — scar tissue and healing wounds from torture — but also what Gale has done to himself out of some desperate need to reconnect with his magic. Pom didn't ask much about what Gale was doing with the Katalyth, what experiment was worth all this - he felt as though he didn't have the right to ask. Maybe he should have - maybe knowing someone cared would stop him from any further self-affliction.
Discomfort flits across his expression, anguish mingling with it as it meets at the bridge of his nose.
"They might not be so bad by comparison, but... that don't mean you gotta make it worse on yourself. I don't—"
He shakes his head, fighting to shut all he's feeling back in - the anger at Patho-Gen, the frustration with himself, the way his heart aches when he thinks about all Gale has been through.
"I still don't understand why you did this to yourself. Why you felt like you needed to."
Asking Gale why he needed to do magic is like asking a shark why it needs
to swim. Because it's natural, because it's all he knows, because he might
die without it.
"Look at what happened after. If I had reliable access to my former power,
I might stand a chance of protecting us." They had taken half the Augmented
and tortured them in ways he still doesn't fully remember. "Besides, I'm a
wizard. I don't know how to be anything else."
Gale sighs and unfastens his pants. Removing the rest of his clothes
reveals a feline tail extending from his tail bone, another new
development. It flicks as he steps down into the water, sinking in up to
his shoulders. "Coming?"
As much as Pom wants to say he still doesn't understand... he gets it. He understands painfully well what it feels like to want to protect someone, to do horrible things in order to do so. Hell, he had to become something else entirely — someone else entirely, and while that someone else is a better person, his hands are still stained, ruined. Even his new persona hasn't been as good as he should be.
He opens his mouth to retort, but ends up staring at Gale's new tail instead. He lets it go without remark, figuring Gale will find that change out on his own soon enough. Pom instead busies himself by pulling off his own clothing. While he has plenty of scars from years past, he has not nearly as many recent ones as Gale. The only surprise he's hiding his how much fur he has under his clothes now, patches of hair and scales coating the majority of his chest. The fur isn't the purple of his pompadour, but closer to a deep indigo - a mismatch that will bother him when his focus isn't elsewhere.
He steps into the basin. While the water doesn't come quite to his shoulders, he has to admit that the weight off his feet is immense. Unfortunately, it does little to mitigate his worry. He fights with himself another moment before he finally finds his voice again.
"You could learn. Learn to be something else, if you had to. You're smart."
"And I could probably amputate my own foot if I had to, like a fox in a
trap, but I'm not so much of an animal yet that I'm ready to start cutting
off parts of myself."
He sighs and shakes his head, knowing that Pom can't really understand. For
the other man, magic is still something strange and dangerous that he's
barely getting used to through exposure. Pom sees it as something Gale
does; Gale sees it as who he is. "It's not just a vocation that I'm skilled
at. The first time I did magic, I was little more than a babe, barely
walking. I don't remember my life before magic. I lost my powers once
before, because of this." He lightly touches that bruised looking circle.
"And it was the lowest point in my life. I had to relearn everything, claw
my way back to my former powers, and I can do that again. I don't know how
to give up, though."
It takes everything in Pom to not remark about how Gale literally has cut parts of himself off — or had Eli do it, rather — but he lets the wizard continue uninterrupted, deciding it's not worth explaining how he found out that tidbit of information by going behind Gale's back and cornering Eli outside the theater. He moves to the edge of the basin; there's a tray there lined with various soaps and oils, clearly meant to float on the water. He starts gathering it up, along with some rags and sponges, all fancier than anything he's ever used in his life.
"I get it," he says, his back still turned to Gale. "I get being born feeling like... you're made for one thing, and one thing only. It ain't all you are, but... that's what you make it sound like. What you come to believe."
He swallows the knot in his throat as he dances around the subject of his own past, keeps it as vague as it always is. He's more specific as he angles toward the topic of Gale himself.
"Difference between us is it's what you want to do. Who you want to be. Whereas I couldn't get far enough away from it."
"Then it isn't the same," he says simply, still more direct than he had
been before Patho-gen took him. "There's being a natural at something,
that's part of it, but that's where the similarities end. There's also
loving it so much you wouldn't choose anything else."
He sinks deeper into the water so that his head rests back against the edge
of the basin. "You never chose your former life. That's why you dance
around it when you talk about it, right? Your choices say as much about you
as your talents." He tilts his head. "What exactly did you do that you
still carry so much guilt over?"
Pom's hand trembles as he sets the bottles onto the tray as delicately as his Shifted fingers, so large and clawed and made for nothing but destruction, will allow. He was right before: Gale is smart. Gale can also see right through him when he chooses to do so.
"I don't—"
He starts to lie so smoothly, so easily; he's done this dance a hundred times, and even those who know about his past in Karteria only know because he chose to tell them, forced himself to. He wanted Northly to realize he wasn't a good person; he wanted Mel to see that he understood her. What does he want from Gale?
That's not an easy question to answer, as every outcome is full of contradictions. His more intimate feelings aside, Pom wants Gale to realize that no, their pasts aren't entirely the same, but it's close enough that they can commiserate. Pom wants Gale to see himself the way he sees him, even if he knows the importance of being seen the way one desires to be seen entirely too well. He wants them to be honest with one another, but the thought of revealing who he is under that dandy persona makes his stomach turn, even after all this time of living together. It only gets worse the longer it goes on, the more monstrous they become.
He looks to the tiny bottles on the tray, wetting his lips as he tries again. It's better Gale knows now, when it's easier to walk away.
"I was a poacher. A thief, a killer. Whatever I needed to be. I didn't choose that life, but I reveled in it all the same."
Gale lets him work through his thoughts in silence. He cares for Pom, so
much so that he thinks he could drown in it, but he doesn't know how to be
soft anymore. He still knows how to love, but like Pom, his clawed hands
aren't made for handling things gently.
"I wonder which of us has killed more people," he muses after a moment of
silence, "I never kept count. Did you?"
That Gale, too, has killed people somehow doesn't surprise Pom. His mind comes up with a dozen justifications, all of which are good enough for Gale, but not for himself.
He shakes his head. "No. Count don't matter so much as how I felt about it."
"Somehow, everything is different when it's you. You hold yourself to
different rules, harsher standards," Gale says. His gaze is strange now,
unwavering, almost unblinking. "You enjoyed it. So did I. The thrill of
battle, of victory. The adrenaline rush! The sound and smells of people
burning alive, not so much, but—" He winces with the intense feeling of
deja vu that hits him.
Pom turns to face him, tray still in hand, his temper hot as the water. Gale makes it sound like it's no big deal - that his past is nothing that should stay with him, weigh on him, dictate who he is and what he does now. He's been hiding for the entirety of his new life; he modeled himself into someone and something else, all for sins that Gale makes sound mundane, commonplace, acceptable.
The steam fogs his glasses, but he can't bear to remove them, not when he can't hide the rest of himself. Gale's gaze cuts him straight through, and he goes on the defensive before he can stop himself.
"There's no thrill when they don't fight. When you gut people just because it makes you feel good. When you take all they've got and don't even leave them with their lives, all for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Did you do that? How many of those did you do?"
Gale leans in a little, unwilling to back down. "So you liked hurting
people who couldn't fight back? Taking from those who couldn't defend
themselves? What's stopping you from doing it now, then? You're bigger,
stronger. I doubt there are many people who could stop you. So what's
stopping you?"
He splashes a little water in his face, almost painful, all challenge. "I
think you didn't know any other way. I think when someone showed you a
different path, you took it. I think you changed."
He can concede that much. "I did change... but I wouldn't have done it on my own." He can concede that much, too.
Pom closes the gap between them, setting the tray on the water before grabbing one of the rags and dunking it beneath the surface. He wrings it tightly before reaching for Gale's arm, not even asking for permission to help. It's a routine he knows, one that also reminds him of home - of her. Despite their proximity, he avoids meeting Gale's eyes.
"I was good at what I did. Liked it, for the most part. It's Purl who changed me, and without her... I'd still be there. Still be a monster because I wouldn't choose otherwise." He handles Gale's limb cautiously, wary of his wounds, and with all the attentiveness of someone who has had to dress many across the years. "When we left that life, I had to be a different person. Relearn everything. Claw my way toward being something. It might not've been ideal, but I had a reason to."
"I don't think anyone does. The people we love always leave a mark, for better or worse."
Pom reaches for his arm, and Gale goes rigid at the unexpected contact. As a wizard, he was always nervous about having his hands restrained, because it left him unable to cast spells, but since his Patho-Gen capture and subsequent torture, he's especially skitish. He's not afraid of Pom, he's just afraid. It says a lot about how much he trusts Pom that he does not pull away, though a tremble does run down his arm and his pulse gallops.
"You had a reason to, but you didn't have to. I'm not saying you ought to forget every bad thing you ever did, but you deserve credit for the strides you've made too." He reaches for Pom's steam fogged glasses with his free hand. "I know something about feeling like if people ever saw all of you, the real you, then they would leave. But I like you and I'm not going anywhere."
Pom freezes when Gale does, realizing all too late that he should have asked, should have considered what happened to him, should have done this, should have done that. Gale is right that Pom holds himself to harsher standards, but that's because he feels he has to. His leash has been far too loose without Purl, and in her absence, he's fallen back into old habits, old patterns.
And old ways of thinking. She'd scold him if she knew he thought he needed to be caged again.
Despite everything that happened to him, Gale doesn't pull away, and Pom is silently grateful, all the more gentle as he continues to help him wash around the tender scar tissue around his shoulders. That puts him well in range for Gale to reach for his glasses, and though Pom flinches reflexively when they're touched, he allows him to take them, reddening at the tops of his long ears and along his cheekbones.
"You say you know that feeling, but then talk like your magic is all you are," he remarks quietly, hoping the steam covers for the feelings he's struggling to rein in. His eyes are as vibrant as ever, though their glow is a little less fiery orange and more warm amber these days, a ring of brown — much like Northly's eyes — now framing the edges. "But that's not the Gale I see... or the one I like. The one I'd have done anything to get back."
Gale wasn't without scars before he arrived in Karteria, but a mage's place
in combat is always at the rear, and he didn't have any major blemishes
other than the orb. That's certainly not true anymore. Pom's kicks to his
legs during their fight at the Valentia, Astarion's bites, his own
mutations and amputations, Patho-Gen's torture — it has all left its mark.
He watches Pom clean all that gnarled flesh so gently, gentler than he
looks like he'd be able to, and his heart aches fiercely. The owlbear makes
demands that Gale can't fulfill.
"I know you would have. I remember what you said while I was trapped," he
says softly. It's easier to stop pretending he doesn't remember the circus
dream when they're not making eye contact, Pom still focused on his skin.
Pom dips the rag back into the water before picking up one of the bottles, trying to determine if it's a fancy soap, shampoo, or oil from viscosity alone. He's barely got it worked into a lather before Gale brings up the dream; his hands pause, his eyes flicking to Gale's face. For a second, he's pretty sure his heart stops.
Gale sees that hesitancy, but completely misinterprets it's cause, assuming
that Pom is as uncomfortable as he is because they kissed, because Pom is
already spoken for. "Yes, it has all been slowly coming back to me in bits
and pieces," Gale admits, gaze flicking away. "And I am so sorry. It wasn't
fair of me to do that to you, I know. Not when you were there for me, as
you always are, offering me comfort and strength when I had none. I fear I
repaid your kindness poorly, and I'm sorry."
When he was being tortured and maimed by people with absolute control over them, all while locked away where no one could find them. Pom has largely been avoiding talking about the dream for fear of bringing those memories back - it's not right to make Gale relive them, all so he can figure out his own feelings.
Though he resumes carefully scrubbing Gale, his ears dip as he struggles to focus on it.
"I was just... I was happy to see you. Relieved. Angry and frustrated and helpless to do a damn thing about it, but also... like I could breathe again, just knowing you were still there. That you weren't gone. You've got nothing to be sorry about."
"I know and that's..." Pom gently scrubs around the scars left by
Astarion's reptilian bite, and he can feel the tension in Gale's shoulders.
"I thought I wasn't coming back, so I could be excused for my indiscretion.
That's no excuse, though." He turns, making sure he can catch Pom's eyes
when he continues. "It was taking advantage of your friendship, not to
mention Northly. So yes, I am sorry to have done that to you."
Gale seems so guilty, and Pom has yet to parse why; the wizard meets his eyes, and Pom can't help but smile in return as he thinks of Northly, of what she tried to insist to him time and time again, embarrassment coloring him. Though the urge to keep talking about the dream — about what happened in it — is there, he keeps scrubbing, making his way up Gale's other arm as carefully as the first.
"I'd admit I was surprised, but... Northly was convinced you were interested months ago. That we'd already been involved at the Valentia when she heard me Shifting in my room."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Continuing his examination, Pom stretches one wing carefully, feeling the musculature. It sure feels as though it belongs there, and moves like it, too. He remembers when his tail suddenly remained after Shifting, and wonders if it's a similar situation. He looks back to Gale to keep talking, only for his gaze to land on the back of the other man's head for a moment too long.
With the wing still in one hand, he reaches to brush a couple of fingers against what he is certain had once been feathers in Gale's hair, tips where they came to a point almost like ears. There's fur there now, solid skin.
"Huh."
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Gale shivers again, but this time it has less to do with the temperature. That 'huh' makes him slap a hand to his head, feeling for the cause of it. It isn't difficult to find. "Ears?" He blurts. "Owlbears certainly don't have ears like this." There's a touch of rising panic in his voice at the thought that his body is undergoing more changes, becoming uglier, more monstrous. He reaches over his shoulder, grabbing and feeling his own wings roughly, like their appearance is a further offense. It occurs to him that it wouldn't be difficult to rip them off.
cw: self-harm
"Hey. Hey!"
He lets go of the wing and steps in front of Gale, taking his hands and pulling them away. "You gotta be careful. You might break the feathers."
But he knows that's not what Gale is concerned about, so he tries again after a beat.
"It's probably the city, you know? It does weird stuff to us Augmented. I mean, look at me."
cw: self-harm
"Kelesis does do weird things to us..." He doesnt mention that he thinks what it does is show them their futures their inevitable selves. "But at least it doesn't torture us."
He looks from the filling tub to the bandages that can't stay on his hands if he's going to get in. Sighing, he decides that they may as well have nothing hidden between them and starts to unwrap them. His arms are a horror. Those black lines creep down them from his chest, particularly the left one. His hands are gnarled with scar tissue from fingers removed and regrown again and again and again. The putrid black boils that mark arcane radiation circle the orb on his chest like stars in a spiral galaxy, radiating out and over his arms. He curls his lip in disgust at everything he's been hiding. "Guess wings and ears aren't so bad in comparison, hm?"
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Discomfort flits across his expression, anguish mingling with it as it meets at the bridge of his nose.
"They might not be so bad by comparison, but... that don't mean you gotta make it worse on yourself. I don't—"
He shakes his head, fighting to shut all he's feeling back in - the anger at Patho-Gen, the frustration with himself, the way his heart aches when he thinks about all Gale has been through.
"I still don't understand why you did this to yourself. Why you felt like you needed to."
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Asking Gale why he needed to do magic is like asking a shark why it needs to swim. Because it's natural, because it's all he knows, because he might die without it.
"Look at what happened after. If I had reliable access to my former power, I might stand a chance of protecting us." They had taken half the Augmented and tortured them in ways he still doesn't fully remember. "Besides, I'm a wizard. I don't know how to be anything else."
Gale sighs and unfastens his pants. Removing the rest of his clothes reveals a feline tail extending from his tail bone, another new development. It flicks as he steps down into the water, sinking in up to his shoulders. "Coming?"
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He opens his mouth to retort, but ends up staring at Gale's new tail instead. He lets it go without remark, figuring Gale will find that change out on his own soon enough. Pom instead busies himself by pulling off his own clothing. While he has plenty of scars from years past, he has not nearly as many recent ones as Gale. The only surprise he's hiding his how much fur he has under his clothes now, patches of hair and scales coating the majority of his chest. The fur isn't the purple of his pompadour, but closer to a deep indigo - a mismatch that will bother him when his focus isn't elsewhere.
He steps into the basin. While the water doesn't come quite to his shoulders, he has to admit that the weight off his feet is immense. Unfortunately, it does little to mitigate his worry. He fights with himself another moment before he finally finds his voice again.
"You could learn. Learn to be something else, if you had to. You're smart."
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"And I could probably amputate my own foot if I had to, like a fox in a trap, but I'm not so much of an animal yet that I'm ready to start cutting off parts of myself."
He sighs and shakes his head, knowing that Pom can't really understand. For the other man, magic is still something strange and dangerous that he's barely getting used to through exposure. Pom sees it as something Gale does; Gale sees it as who he is. "It's not just a vocation that I'm skilled at. The first time I did magic, I was little more than a babe, barely walking. I don't remember my life before magic. I lost my powers once before, because of this." He lightly touches that bruised looking circle. "And it was the lowest point in my life. I had to relearn everything, claw my way back to my former powers, and I can do that again. I don't know how to give up, though."
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"I get it," he says, his back still turned to Gale. "I get being born feeling like... you're made for one thing, and one thing only. It ain't all you are, but... that's what you make it sound like. What you come to believe."
He swallows the knot in his throat as he dances around the subject of his own past, keeps it as vague as it always is. He's more specific as he angles toward the topic of Gale himself.
"Difference between us is it's what you want to do. Who you want to be. Whereas I couldn't get far enough away from it."
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"Then it isn't the same," he says simply, still more direct than he had been before Patho-gen took him. "There's being a natural at something, that's part of it, but that's where the similarities end. There's also loving it so much you wouldn't choose anything else."
He sinks deeper into the water so that his head rests back against the edge of the basin. "You never chose your former life. That's why you dance around it when you talk about it, right? Your choices say as much about you as your talents." He tilts his head. "What exactly did you do that you still carry so much guilt over?"
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"I don't—"
He starts to lie so smoothly, so easily; he's done this dance a hundred times, and even those who know about his past in Karteria only know because he chose to tell them, forced himself to. He wanted Northly to realize he wasn't a good person; he wanted Mel to see that he understood her. What does he want from Gale?
That's not an easy question to answer, as every outcome is full of contradictions. His more intimate feelings aside, Pom wants Gale to realize that no, their pasts aren't entirely the same, but it's close enough that they can commiserate. Pom wants Gale to see himself the way he sees him, even if he knows the importance of being seen the way one desires to be seen entirely too well. He wants them to be honest with one another, but the thought of revealing who he is under that dandy persona makes his stomach turn, even after all this time of living together. It only gets worse the longer it goes on, the more monstrous they become.
He looks to the tiny bottles on the tray, wetting his lips as he tries again. It's better Gale knows now, when it's easier to walk away.
"I was a poacher. A thief, a killer. Whatever I needed to be. I didn't choose that life, but I reveled in it all the same."
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Gale lets him work through his thoughts in silence. He cares for Pom, so much so that he thinks he could drown in it, but he doesn't know how to be soft anymore. He still knows how to love, but like Pom, his clawed hands aren't made for handling things gently.
"I wonder which of us has killed more people," he muses after a moment of silence, "I never kept count. Did you?"
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He shakes his head. "No. Count don't matter so much as how I felt about it."
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"Somehow, everything is different when it's you. You hold yourself to different rules, harsher standards," Gale says. His gaze is strange now, unwavering, almost unblinking. "You enjoyed it. So did I. The thrill of battle, of victory. The adrenaline rush! The sound and smells of people burning alive, not so much, but—" He winces with the intense feeling of deja vu that hits him.
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Pom turns to face him, tray still in hand, his temper hot as the water. Gale makes it sound like it's no big deal - that his past is nothing that should stay with him, weigh on him, dictate who he is and what he does now. He's been hiding for the entirety of his new life; he modeled himself into someone and something else, all for sins that Gale makes sound mundane, commonplace, acceptable.
The steam fogs his glasses, but he can't bear to remove them, not when he can't hide the rest of himself. Gale's gaze cuts him straight through, and he goes on the defensive before he can stop himself.
"There's no thrill when they don't fight. When you gut people just because it makes you feel good. When you take all they've got and don't even leave them with their lives, all for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Did you do that? How many of those did you do?"
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Gale leans in a little, unwilling to back down. "So you liked hurting people who couldn't fight back? Taking from those who couldn't defend themselves? What's stopping you from doing it now, then? You're bigger, stronger. I doubt there are many people who could stop you. So what's stopping you?"
He splashes a little water in his face, almost painful, all challenge. "I think you didn't know any other way. I think when someone showed you a different path, you took it. I think you changed."
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Pom closes the gap between them, setting the tray on the water before grabbing one of the rags and dunking it beneath the surface. He wrings it tightly before reaching for Gale's arm, not even asking for permission to help. It's a routine he knows, one that also reminds him of home - of her. Despite their proximity, he avoids meeting Gale's eyes.
"I was good at what I did. Liked it, for the most part. It's Purl who changed me, and without her... I'd still be there. Still be a monster because I wouldn't choose otherwise." He handles Gale's limb cautiously, wary of his wounds, and with all the attentiveness of someone who has had to dress many across the years. "When we left that life, I had to be a different person. Relearn everything. Claw my way toward being something. It might not've been ideal, but I had a reason to."
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Pom reaches for his arm, and Gale goes rigid at the unexpected contact. As a wizard, he was always nervous about having his hands restrained, because it left him unable to cast spells, but since his Patho-Gen capture and subsequent torture, he's especially skitish. He's not afraid of Pom, he's just afraid. It says a lot about how much he trusts Pom that he does not pull away, though a tremble does run down his arm and his pulse gallops.
"You had a reason to, but you didn't have to. I'm not saying you ought to forget every bad thing you ever did, but you deserve credit for the strides you've made too." He reaches for Pom's steam fogged glasses with his free hand. "I know something about feeling like if people ever saw all of you, the real you, then they would leave. But I like you and I'm not going anywhere."
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And old ways of thinking. She'd scold him if she knew he thought he needed to be caged again.
Despite everything that happened to him, Gale doesn't pull away, and Pom is silently grateful, all the more gentle as he continues to help him wash around the tender scar tissue around his shoulders. That puts him well in range for Gale to reach for his glasses, and though Pom flinches reflexively when they're touched, he allows him to take them, reddening at the tops of his long ears and along his cheekbones.
"You say you know that feeling, but then talk like your magic is all you are," he remarks quietly, hoping the steam covers for the feelings he's struggling to rein in. His eyes are as vibrant as ever, though their glow is a little less fiery orange and more warm amber these days, a ring of brown — much like Northly's eyes — now framing the edges. "But that's not the Gale I see... or the one I like. The one I'd have done anything to get back."
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Gale wasn't without scars before he arrived in Karteria, but a mage's place in combat is always at the rear, and he didn't have any major blemishes other than the orb. That's certainly not true anymore. Pom's kicks to his legs during their fight at the Valentia, Astarion's bites, his own mutations and amputations, Patho-Gen's torture — it has all left its mark. He watches Pom clean all that gnarled flesh so gently, gentler than he looks like he'd be able to, and his heart aches fiercely. The owlbear makes demands that Gale can't fulfill.
"I know you would have. I remember what you said while I was trapped," he says softly. It's easier to stop pretending he doesn't remember the circus dream when they're not making eye contact, Pom still focused on his skin.
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"You... you do?"
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Gale sees that hesitancy, but completely misinterprets it's cause, assuming that Pom is as uncomfortable as he is because they kissed, because Pom is already spoken for. "Yes, it has all been slowly coming back to me in bits and pieces," Gale admits, gaze flicking away. "And I am so sorry. It wasn't fair of me to do that to you, I know. Not when you were there for me, as you always are, offering me comfort and strength when I had none. I fear I repaid your kindness poorly, and I'm sorry."
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When he was being tortured and maimed by people with absolute control over them, all while locked away where no one could find them. Pom has largely been avoiding talking about the dream for fear of bringing those memories back - it's not right to make Gale relive them, all so he can figure out his own feelings.
Though he resumes carefully scrubbing Gale, his ears dip as he struggles to focus on it.
"I was just... I was happy to see you. Relieved. Angry and frustrated and helpless to do a damn thing about it, but also... like I could breathe again, just knowing you were still there. That you weren't gone. You've got nothing to be sorry about."
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"I know and that's..." Pom gently scrubs around the scars left by Astarion's reptilian bite, and he can feel the tension in Gale's shoulders. "I thought I wasn't coming back, so I could be excused for my indiscretion. That's no excuse, though." He turns, making sure he can catch Pom's eyes when he continues. "It was taking advantage of your friendship, not to mention Northly. So yes, I am sorry to have done that to you."
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"I'd admit I was surprised, but... Northly was convinced you were interested months ago. That we'd already been involved at the Valentia when she heard me Shifting in my room."
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