#kallrin

Helena, meanwhile, was a lot less happy about being saddled with a baby she'd never wanted in the first place and expected to be the main care giver. As much as she hoped Kallian would get bored of the thing soon so that her dad would finally let her kill it, she'd rather Kallian entertain and care for Orin than have to do that herself. Kallian became increasingly parentified as time went on, but despite the stress, this was one thing she didn't want to make cultists do for her. Orin was her sister, so Kallian should be the one to give her everything. Kallian was the first person Orin smiled at, the first name she tried to say, the person she always wanted when she was crying, and that was everything to Kallian.

This didn't stop Orin from adoring S*revok too, who had no interest in actually raising his kid but was perfectly happy to be the "fun" parent and shower her in treats for her approval. Kallian always felt a mixture of jealousy over Orin liking someone else, and a genuine unease over their relationship that she could never quite explain (that would be the grooming), but she comforted herself with the fact that she was always Orin's number one. Her grandfather might have had the money to buy Orin gifts, but Kallian was the one to let Orin share her room and her bed, when Helena got tired of sharing her room with a crying infant. Kallian was the one who could get notoriously picky eater Orin to eat, who hand fed her and encouraged her and played games with her food to convince her to swallow it. Kallian was the only one Orin was always willing to talk to, even in mumbles, when she clammed up around everyone else. Kallian was the one who was always thinking up new games for them to play, and the one who was constantly by her side.

And for Orin's part… she was constantly told that Kallian was the most important person in the world, Bhaal's will in mortal form, worthy of worship. When you're a kid and you know one other kid, and they're your best friend and your care giver, it's really not hard to think of them as your god too. And with all the underlying trauma of growing up in a murder cult where none of the adults really give that much of a shit about you, the two of them were easily each other's safe spaces. Orin would throw tantrums after being apart from Kallian for more than an hour, and Kallian got stressed being away from Orin too. Even as adults, the separation anxiety never really went completely away.

As she became a preteen, Kallian started wanting a little more from life than to hang out being friends with Orin forever. She wanted to lead her cult, instead of having her older brother handle everything, and make art and cook and talk to adults—and it's not that she didn't want Orin there for all of that, but why did she have to be so babyish about everything?? (Could it be because Orin was suffering developmental delay due to neglect and also literally only six years old?) Kallian ended up losing her temper on several occasions, but would usually apologise once Orin started crying.

This strain was "fixed" somewhat, by first Helena's death—which only increased Kallian's feelings of protectiveness towards Orin—and S*revok's response to Helena's death and Kallian starting puberty being that it was clearly time to start sexually abusing another teenager. Kallian never managed to admit to themself that what he was doing to them was abuse, or that they weren't having a great time being Mature and Desirable. But it was a hell of a lot of trauma to be keeping in and again, they turned to Orin as a safe space.

And… you know how sometimes, people who don't feel like they're having their emotional needs met by their partner will start behaving emotionally incestuously towards their kids, so that this child who relies on and adores them can give them the attention they feel they're missing? Kallian was very much getting that from Orin. There'd always been an almost complete lack of boundaries between them anyway, and no adults who cared enough to enforce them or encourage healthy relationships—Kallian had been bathing her baby sister since they were kids, and saw no need to go to the effort of preparing two different baths for them now! And as much as S*revok tried to keep the overt incest behind closed doors, neither of these kids grew up feeling that there was anything particularly wrong about fucking your family members.

The one outside relationship that Kallian attempted as a teenager (with a girl with long blonde hair, pale skin and eyes, and who wore a red cloak, none of which Kallian had even a slight bit of self-awareness about) ended in disastrous failure (i.e. Kallian raping and murdering her), leaving Kallian convinced that she could only really be understood by her family. Orin meanwhile, had always known she belonged to Kallian, the greatest person in the world (and the person closest to her age in the cult), and when she started developing sexual desires herself, there was only one person she wanted to act those out with.

Kallian at least made an effort to not horrifically take advantage of her twelve year old sister clumsily trying to flirt with her. She got the feeling something would be wrong about giving in to Orin's advances, even if she couldn't figure out why. She felt terrified and disgusted when S*revok started hitting on Orin—enough to finally exile him from the temple and kill all his supporters. But trying to figure out why she felt like that? Kallian still wasn't able to admit to herself that fucking a child you're supposed to be in a position of guardianship over is a horrific, monstrous betrayal that will scar them deeply, because that would mean admitting what S*revok had done to her, and to her older sister Helena. So… clearly the only other explanation was jealousy over seeing him with Orin. And if there was nothing wrong with what S*revok did, there was nothing wrong with Kallian giving in to her growing feelings for Orin and taking what was always meant to be hers.

For the first few years of their romantic relationship, Kallian showered Orin in enough love and attention to just about drown out any guilt she was feeling. Orin was clearly feeling some stress, Presumably from adjusting to being the consort of the High Priest. (Kallian had no desire to keep their relationship a secret, since she was "better than S*revok" and wanted Orin to be raised up and celebrated. And besides, the two of them could just murder anyone who had a problem with their relationship!) Sure, they weren't equals, but they weren't supposed to be—Kallian was always meant to be greater, and Orin was always meant to be an extension of her. They were both completely happy with that—according to Kallian.

As time went on, Kallian very much started taking Orin for granted. Sure, Orin wasn't shy about questioning Kallian's word or arguing with her, and when she got too upset she'd sometimes express her feelings with knives, but she'd always be Kallian's in the end. And maybe sometimes Orin ended up needing to be punished to pull her back in line, but Kallian was always happy to kiss better any wounds she'd inflicted afterwards.

One of Orin's main problems was the fact that Kallian would often get intense crushes on other people and obsess over (i.e. stalk, kidnap, imprison, torture, rape, and eventually kill) them for months on end. Kallian never considered this cheating—obviously Orin was her number one, and it would be ridiculous to consider a mere pet to be a rival to the other half of her soul! It was a constant point of contention between the two of them, but Orin was usually mollified with the fact that every pet ended up dead, often with the two of them plunging in a knife together. (Orin, meanwhile, wasn't allowed to sleep with anyone without Kallian's express permission, and anyone she did sleep with, Kallian would murder immediately after the act.)

To Kallian and Orin, love meant violence and ownership and extremes. Love was Orin letting Kallian crack her ribcage open to touch her heart. Love was carving their names into each other's flesh. Love was Orin belonging to Kallian in every way possible, and Kallian pushing at more and more boundaries, content in the knowledge that Orin loved her too much to ever leave her.

But as Kallian reached her 30s… she just got bored of her life. She'd had so much handed to her and had so much of her life planned out, and it all boiled down to, "hurt people, kill people, be the last person left alive." The rush of power you get from taking a life doesn't feel as satisfying the ten thousandth time you do it (even if your god does give you murder orgasms over it). When you're arrogant enough to be convinced that every one of your beliefs is backed 100% by your god, nothing can ever challenge you. So with "being an evil bastard" becoming boring, the only solution Kallian could possibly think of was… to become an Even More Evil Bastard. Which meant two things. Firstly, hurting Orin even more, and secondly—and more excitingly—the Absolute plot.

Orin, unsurprisingly, had been getting frustrated with Kallian for a while before this. When the plot started, she still had no plans to take Kallian's place as Chosen herself—it's hard enough to leave any abusive relationship, let alone one that's defined your entire life. But she'd been feeling more and more that, sometimes, what Kallian declared was Bhaal's Will was actually just Kallian's will, and that Orin was the only one of them who really bothered to pay attention to the old doctrine, or to make her kills actually worthy of Bhaal.

And then came the Absolute plot which—well, first of all, it was something new for Kallian to hyperfocus on, and while her hyperfocuses never generally lasted too long, they did often involve emotionally neglecting Orin for a bit while Kallian lost herself in her newest project. And it didn't help that part of that new, consuming project was Enver Gortash, Kallian's latest crush. While she might have talked about him like he was any other pet, he was allowed to walk round insulting Orin and daring to imagine himself an equal to Kallian, rather than spending his time chained up in the corner of their room. This was unchartered territory, and while to Kallian, it was more about trying something new to stave off that relentless boredom and didn't make Gortash more important than any other pet, Orin was not happy about being ignored, while Kallian gave more respect and freedom to a pet who was the Chosen of Bhaal's rival, and openly hated Orin. Orin begged constantly for Kallian to kill him for her, or to let her kill him, but even when she was angry at Gortash, Kallian continued to insist they needed him alive.

As the plot progressed, Kallian, Orin and Gortash temporarily moved to Moonrise Towers to plan with Ketheric and take control of the mindlayer colony beneath the tower—Orin wasn't generally invited to the Chosens' meetings, but neither she nor Kallian even considered the idea of Kallian leaving the temple for weeks at a time without her. Being away from home and surrounded by a curse that made it difficult to get out left Orin with little to do while Kallian was busy, and she ended up bonding with the Myrkulites a little. At the same time as Orin was struggling with feeling unwanted by Kallian, Ketheric was dealing with a newly alive Isobel abandoning him, and the two of them were quick to develop an unhealthy pseudo-familial bond to avoid dealing with their problems. It would take way too long to get into Orin and Ketheric's relationship on a post that's already been going on forever, but suffice to say, he was not happy that his surrogate daughter figure was trapped in a relationship that was incestuous and deeply abusive (and gay, but that one's less of a problem than Ketheric Thorm thinks). He began encouraging Orin to leave Kallian, and offered her a support network if she did.

Orin still held onto hope that she could get things back to how they'd been years ago, when Kallian still doted on her—or even to just to how things has been before the Absolute plot, when she'd still been Kallian's number one and only got mistreated every now and then. She justified Kallian's increasing humiliation and torture of her with the fact that at least Kallian was paying attention to her. When she'd almost reached a breaking point, Kallian won her back by gifting her the ring Orin uses in game to teleport, along with pseudo-wedding vows. Despite everything, Orin made the choice to stay with Kallian again and again… until Kallian joked that Orin was her obedient slave, and would always do whatever she wanted anyway, acting as though she didn't have a choice in the matter. After everything, it only took something small to finally break her.

Kallian, of course, continued on in her unshakeable belief that Orin would never, ever leave her. Even when she first felt the blade pierce her head, she assumed Orin was just engaging in a little bit of hardcore blood play, and then that she was taking things too far out of mere incompetence—not that she considered her sister to be incompetent, but what other explanation could there be for Orin risking her life? She only realised Orin was serious with seconds of consciousness left, and that wasn't long enough for Kallian to figure out why.

As much as Orin had planned to kill Kallian there… permanently leaving an abusive relationship is difficult. At the last moment, she chickened out, feeding Kallian a health potion that kept her stable, if comatose, and switching her plan to tadpoling, so Kallian would be the one who was controlled when she woke up. Waking her up, of course, turned out to be a lot easier said than done.

Orin spent the next several months grieving, and trying to convince herself she was happy. She finally got to be Bhaal's Chosen (and to try to convince herself that taking her rightful place, as the child who actually cared about Bhaal's wishes, was her main motivation in disposing of Kallian). She finally had all the power Kallian had always denied her. It didn't stop her being desperately lonely. Her friendship with Ketheric fell apart almost immediately after Kallian's downfall, when he realised that instead of a sweet girl who'd be fine and normal without Kallian's corrupting influence, Orin was still a vicious, unpleasant killer with a fuckload of issues to work through. Most of Kallian's cultists looked down on her after years of watching her be degraded by Bhaal's "real" Chosen, and after seeing how much Kallian struggled to keep the cult afloat after getting rid of S*revok's people, Orin wasn't stupid enough to kill all of them before building up her own support base.

She ended up dealing with her grief and anger over Kallian's treatment of her by findind and tadpoling Minthara. Minthara was her perfect mind controlled doll who always told Orin how wonderful she was, even after Orin reenacted all the tortures Kallian put her through onto Minthara. It never actually helped Orin feel better.

And finally, we've reached the start of the actual game. Kallian woke up on the nautiloid with no memory of her name—but the name, "Orin" was carved into her thigh, and that felt comforting and important so she decided that was presumably what her name was. (In my Orin playthrough AU, Orin sees the name, "Kallian," on her thigh, and feels a twinge of dread.) She went on calling herself Orin for several weeks, before finally realising, no, that was someone else important to her, Orin was a lover. She took the name Lee for herself.

Lee spent a lot of the first couple of Acts trying to remember who exactly Orin was. She was pretty sure she dreamed of Orin, but on waking up, only remembered flashes of red and white. And then she saw Orin and the other Chosen in the colony under Moonrise, and things started coming back. Specific memories were slow to return, but by the time Lee arrived at Baldur's Gate, she remembered all the basics of her relationship with Orin, and as well as having all the feelings return. Given that she'd now developed morals, there were a lot of horrifying discoveries.

She attempted to keep her memories about Orin to herself for a while, fearing her companions' reaction. She tried very hard to keep everything inside, and to be a normal and sympathetic friend as Minthara opened up about the abuse she went through at Orin's hands. She fought down the irrational jealousy a few times, before finally snapping that Minthara had just been the rebound, and Orin had never really cared about her. Lee couldn't blame Minthara for never forgiving her for that.

Orin was in two minds on Lee's return to the city. On the one hand, she felt she deserved to be Chosen more than Kallian ever had, and wasn't willing to give her power up for a brain damaged failure. On the other hand… she'd been miserably lonely since losing Kallian, and part of her was longing for everything to just go back to normal. She was both terrified of, and yearning for, Kallian's return—and then had her every expectation and fear dashed by discovering the Kallian who returned was completely different to the Kallian who left. This Kallian was kind, and soft, and it was everything Orin had wanted, and in complete opposition to the Kallian she was desperately missing. While part of Orin hatefully and shamefully craved that kindness, she was determined to press and poke at Kallian until she admitted who she really was and became herself again.

What Lee's companions saw from this was the Crazy Evil Bhaalist sexually harassing their good friend who was shriveling up in shame about her previous relationship with Orin, and got completely the wrong idea about it. And, "Orin was an abusive monster but we're not judging you for what she did to you," did not help to make Lee's shame any better. Neither did Wyll reassuring her that her previous relationship was all in the past, that he knew Lee only loved him now. She absolutely did love Wyll, and had no desire to return to how things had been with Orin, but none of that made the feelings she had for her sister suddenly disappear. Pointing out to her companions that Lee had been a) older than Orin and b) Orin's cult leader was one of the hardest things Lee ever did, and a harder revelation for several of her friends than her role in the Absolute plot, but after everything she'd done to Orin, she owed it to her to at least not paint her the villain here.

Orin spied on the party a lot throughout Act 3, and especially on Lee and Wyll together. Kallian's pets had been bad enough, but now she was acting as though she was in an equal partnership with some man who wasn't even family. Kallian had known him a few months, and was showing him the kind of love she'd never shown Orin. Orin hated Wyll not only for taking her person, but for only wanting this lesser version of Kallian, for wanting the glory of Bhaal bound and broken. For being the person Kallian was willing to change for, when she never changed for Orin.

Wyll was the obvious choice for kidnapping, whatever the game thinks. Initially, it was about hurting Lee, but once she was disguised as Wyll, Orin got to experience that kindness and equality in a relationship for herself. It hurt more than she thought it would. She persuaded Lee to sleep with her (the only difficulty in doing so was Lee worrying if Wyll was really ready for that, despite him being twice the age Orin has been when Lee decided she was ready) and got to be with her sibling one last time before turning back into herself—into the person Kallian didn't want any longer—and giving her demands. After begging Kallian to kill Gortash for her dozens of times, this time she finally and readily agreed. For Wyll's sake. It didn't make Orin feel any better about her enemy's death.

By the time Lee arrived at the temple for the duel, Orin was starting to accept that she was as trapped as she'd ever been. Being with Kallian had been constantly terrifying, being without her was desperately lonely. Lee was kinder than Kallian, but able to make things hurt in ways Kallian never had. Even tormenting Wyll by recounting all his precious Lee's crimes to him didn't feel good when he reacted by expressing sympathy towards Orin. The duel was going to go one of two ways. Either Orin would be rid of her sibling forever, and might finally be able to move on and let Bhaal's approval fill the gaping hole in her life. Or she'd die by her sibling's blades, like perhaps she was always supposed to. Lee's kindness would finally be replaced with Kallian's violence and Orin would have her sibling back, really back, one last time as she bled out for her. She wasn't sure which outcome she'd prefer.

Lee was almost as conflicted. She'd been defending Orin to her companions for weeks, but that got harder when they kept finding the mutilated bodies of Orin's victims, when she was threatening Wyll, when Lee was struggling with being betrayed and violated by Orin herself, and trying to shove those feelings aside with, "well I did far worse than rape by deception to her so I have no right to feel upset," was actually making those feelings worse. And all the time, she was feeling the Urge—wouldn't it feel so good to get her revenge with Orin's death? Wasn't life so much easier when she could just solve her problems with murder?

When Lee reached the temple, she did try to appeal to Orin. Orin, of course, was in no mood to listen, and attacked, forcing Lee to fight back to defend herself. After a vicious duel, Lee managed to disarm Orin, ready to strike the killing blow. At the last moment, Lee threw her sword away, choosing to embrace Orin instead, choosing to reject Bhaal and her old life once and for all, and finally do right by her sister.

Bhaal, naturally, disagreed with all of this, and decided both his useless children needed to die so he could start over. As in game, Withers came in to resurrect Lee and told them he was able to bring back the part of them that Bhaal hadn't known. Lee begged and demanded the same for Orin, who was the only reason Lee was even here, the only reason she'd done anything at all to fight the cult of the Absolute, rather than lead it. Orin had saved her, given her a chance to be someone better away from the cult, and Lee was determined to give her that chance too.

So, Withers brought back Orin—or at least, the parts of Orin Bhaal didn't know. Which, considering so much of Orin's life was defined by Bhaal, meant she ended up waking up with amnesia and covered in blood—but free to make her own choices for the first time in her life.

Lee strongly considered being there to help Orin through her resurrection, and to support and guide her in her new life. But… Orin's life had always been defined by Lee, as much as it had by Bhaal. If Lee really wanted to change, to make sure not to fall back into old habits, she needed to finally let Orin go.