The first emotion you’d experienced when you’d received the letter had been elation. Your eyes scanned over the delicate script. It was a formal invitation in Withers’s unmistakably beloved and antiquated dialect, requesting that you join your former companions for a reunion party in the very place your adventures together began. Had it really been six months since you’d defeated the Absolute? It felt simultaneously like the blink of an eye had passed as well as a lifetime.

As you packed up your travel supplies (and something to wear fit for a celebration), your thoughts and feelings drifted from your initial excitement at the prospect of seeing your companions to the very distinct realization that this meant you would probably see him too. Your former lover. Astarion Ancunin. Well, Lord Astarion Ancunin now, you supposed. The thought made your heart twist and turn. You hadn’t exactly parted on the best of terms.

When Astarion had ascended, when you’d helped him ascend - perhaps against your better judgment - you had been disappointed in how he’d changed. He’d become colder, crueler, more domineering, megalomaniacal and guarded. He’d pressured you to let him turn you into his spawn…er…his consort. When you’d refused, he’d ended your relationship. Just. Like. That. It had broken your heart.

As you step into that familiar campsite, joyous music filling your ears, you hate that your eyes are already searching for him. So far you spy Gale, Shadowheart, Halsin, Lae’zel, Karlach, Wyll, Jaheira, Minsc, but not…

“Looking for someone, darling?” a familiar, silky voice asks from behind you making your ears burn. Oh, gods…this could be very, very bad…