[He wishes they had acted on it. How simple a solution it'd have been, all neat and tidily filed: retuning to Toril only to find his master had been undone by a pack of famed adventurers— no second glances at his back, no need to run or hide or come back to face the demons from his past. But then he'd only be returning to find a dead pack of adventurers, he supposes (perhaps that's unfair, given all they've mastered; perhaps it isn't, and they would be lucky just to perish and have it done with, for there's a much worse fate they might've come to in dealing with Cazador Szarr, and it takes so little for fangs to sink in deep).

He moves to stand opposite to Shadowheart, cool cloth taken up between his fingers (though the redness flooding pearl-white fingertips makes its water laden sum look hotter than it is), pressed slowly to Fenris' forehead— brushed across the sides of his face. A temporary distraction for the moon elf's visibly overtaxed nerves.

In the end, what he really wants is for this to have never been his plight to begin with. For none of this to have happened, least of all the agonized flickers in a focused, drawn down expression lost within his shadow.]

The word hardly does him justice. [Astarion murmurs, distant through the hollow thrumming of each syllable. Somewhere else, for just a few, scant seconds.

His stare lifts.]

That other woman.... ['Karlach,' Shadowheart offers.] Karlach, [Astarion corrects in turn,] she was right about him. That there'll be no peace if we stay here like this.

Considering it's nearly morning, I'm not worried about tonight. [And he'd rather not move Leto yet, if they can afford the extra time for him to heal. He's no weak heart, of course, but gods, he deserves better than to limp off like a wounded dog— no time to choose for himself, less time still to reconcile with departure.] But....

[There's something masked in his expression, silently conveyed. Petitions he can't bring to the forefront of his wearied throat.]