djinn-and-djuice

[djinn-and-djuice]

(i’m back? I’ve got a fic, at the very least. inspired by a bit of unused audio from the game Transistor, a bit of a reflection on the beacon. ao3 link)

[set during episodes 50-51]

a star, or a tomb

~*~

            It was a terrible idea, but this had been a week packed to the rafters with terrible ideas, so what was one more? If this whole sequence of events was just the slow digging of his grave, at least he was the one holding the shovel now. They were going into the lions’ den, no, directly into the lion’s jaws, and this might be his last opportunity to look upon the beacon.

            Sitting on the stone ground under his dome, under the tunnel roof, under tons of earth, under the crushing weight of two empires, Caleb chose to act. He reached over to Jester’s haversack and silently snaked his hand inside. He was the only one awake, sitting watch in case any more of those Ropers or something worse happened by, although Frumpkin was loafing atop the dome as an extra pair of eyes, so it wasn’t as though he was truly alone. Jester had taken the haversack off and fell asleep with it by her back, so it was no matter to pull the leaden box out and set it on his lap. He shrugged his coat off and draped it over everything to dull the glow of the beacon when he cracked the lid. The light, when he finally opened the cold metal box, was little more than a faint seep under the fabric of his coat, and not even Caduceus stirred. Taking a steadying breath, he spread his fingers out over the dodecahedron.

            Without the pulsing light to draw his focus, it was easier to pick out other details that he had missed before. It felt cool and smooth like cut quartz under his fingers, the sharp corners dulled by time. There were minute scratches along the surface, and the occasional tiny chip on the edges. An object well cared for, certainly, but the centuries left their marks. The handles, smoothly-wrought metal, had no give at all where they met the stone, affixed either by magic or some ancient lapidary skills likely lost to time. As he lay his palm fully on one of the faces there came a resonance from within it, from a space Caleb could only assume to be its core, if magical stone could have such a thing; an odd vibration that fell somewhere between the rushing pulse of blood and the comforting thrum of Frumpkin’s purr.

            His eyes drifted closed after a moment, and he let his breathing sync up with the gentle ebb and flow of that unearthly hum.

            It was hard to tell how much time passed like that, breathing and letting the sensation travel through him. And while normally that would have frightened him, would call him back to those dark years in the asylum, there was instead a strange peace that settled in his mind instead.

            Drawing the coat up over his head like a shroud, he cracked the box open wider, and let the glow wash over him. Contained in the small space it was almost too bright, although logically Caleb knew it wasn’t any brighter than one of his dancing lights. He looked at the beacon, cataloguing each of the little nicks and scratches he had felt beneath his hand. The more he examined it, the less it looked like a solid object and the more it looked like a container. There was something there, something he had seen in the basement of the Leaky Tap but had been too afraid to examine. Not this time. He pulled the beacon out and set it on his lap. Then, taking a slow breath, he shifted from looking at it, to looking into it. And in that moment everything, everything, ceased to matter.

            Caleb was aware of his body only in the most prosaic sense. It was an object in space on the prime material plane. The tunnel, the monsters, the looming specter of Xhorhas before them and the hounds of the Empire behind, all diminished into tiny trivialities. There was only the beacon, and the vast star field around him. Possibilities, causalities, entire lifetimes all stretched out around him in an infinite web of constellations, tracing like the roots of a vast tree behind him, into infinite branches and leaves before. If he wanted, it would be nothing to find one of these paths and trace it, see all its secrets. He felt no urgency, no rush; there was time. Here, there was nothing but.

            Peace, silence, and light.

            Caleb let his eyes drift closed. He now understood, or at least he thought he understood, the nature of the object in his hands, but he could never put that understanding to words. It was immeasurably dense but no heavier than Nott, incomparably vast but tucked snugly in his lap. This was a thing of wonder, of beauty, of power beyond scope.

            He opened his eyes. He had to look deeper.

            No longer was he in the cave, or the star field. He stood in a vast field of golden grain, and the bittersweet ache of memory pricked his heart. These were the Zemni Fields of his youth, not as they truly were but lacquered over with the nostalgia of childhood, lit with the light the world held when it was still wide and full of wonder. He held the beacon in one hand and began to walk, trailing his other hand through the stalks. Each one meant something, had been placed specifically with a purpose; he did not know what, but that would come in time.

            Out of the corner of his eye he saw the shapes of other people walking in other directions. When he turned his head to look they vanished like mist, like they had never been there. The wheat was taller now, the tassels brushing up above his waist and the prickly grass clinging to his bare arms.

            That was where his thoughts caught. He had been wearing his coat before, right? He had been clothed, at the very least. He could feel the dirt and weeds beneath his feet, and the wind against the skin of his back. But just as quickly as the concern came, it left. It did not matter, here, what he wore. Holding up his empty hand, he stared at the thin, pearlescent scars up his forearm, how the golden light caught them like chips of mica. They were so old, now, and dug so deep in the flesh they would never fade. He would need to begin again, to grow anew like the wheat.

            Eventually he came to a stop. There was no forest yet on the horizon, no humble village that he knew by heart. Perhaps there would never be. Perhaps he was too late, or too early. Still, though, this was fine. This was where he was supposed to be. He carefully sat down in the field, holding the beacon in both hands. Shifting the stalks around him, Caleb lay back and stared up at the fathomless sky. He set the beacon on his chest, finding rest for it just below his sternum, and sinking his hands into the rich earth beside him. This, too, meant something.

            The wheat, it seemed from this perspective, was even taller now. The sky was impossibly blue. He was one with both, and the beacon set upon his chest centered him. He had spent enough time here, he realized. It was impossible to tell how long he had been here, but it was time to go. He closed his eyes.

            Awareness came back to him in pieces. The cold damp of the floor, the ache in his hunched shoulders, the muggy and stagnant air under his coat. He had bent over far enough in his trance that his forehead was pressed to the beacon, and the light left spots over his vision when he sat up. With some reluctance, he packed the beacon back in the box and slid it back into the haversack. He didn’t want to let go of it, now that he had seen inside. That tranquil understanding was starting to slip from his grasp, leaving only memories and the frustrating knowledge that it would take years, decades, to truly comprehend and retain what he had been given.

            He called Frumpkin down from the top of the dome and gathered him in his arms, Frumpkin purring happily and nuzzling under his chin. He sat out the rest of his shift like that, looking out into the dark and trying to find the stars.

[djinn-and-djuice]

Continuing in the Valentine’s exchange, I wrote two fics! This one is for Fox, @ST_RFOX on twitter, for the prompt “baking sweets together”. it was an absolute joy to write. (ao3 link)

[set post-canon]

rise and shine

~*~

It was pitch black out when Fjord felt the mattress shift beside him and the brief cold breeze snaking under the blanket that signified Caleb getting out of bed. He rolled over and blearily reached an arm out, catching Caleb’s wrist in loose fingers before he could fully climb out of bed. Even after all these years he still had trouble sleeping, and in the time they’d been sharing a bed Fjord had gotten used to Caleb getting up in the small hours of the night to get some fresh air. All the same, he didn’t want Caleb to vanish without checking in first.

“Everything alright?” Fjord asked blearily, rubbing the thin skin of Caleb’s wrist with his thumb.

“Ja, just couldn’t sleep.”

“Nightmare?” Before, he would have talked around it, tried to indirectly coax the details out of Caleb, fearful of making him anxious again, or pulling him back into the memories. Now, he looked at his husband and knew he could ask without worry.

“No, I just woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep. I’m going to go downstairs and bake something for breakfast, you get some more rest.”

Caleb pressed a kiss to his forehead and stood up all the way, stretching his arms over his head and making his quiet way out of the room. Fjord briefly enjoyed the view, before pulling the blankets up and trying to settle back down.

Sleep came quickly after that, and Fjord let it wash over him.

 ---

 Whatever it was that had woken Caleb up, it was catching. Fjord briefly dozed off after Caleb went downstairs, but now he was awake. Awake with a vengeance. The cold space in the bed where Caleb would normally be certainly didn’t help matters.

It wasn’t quite dawn, but the first weak rays of light were starting to color the sky. With a resigned sigh, Fjord sat up and got out of bed. Still in pajamas, he made his way downstairs to find Caleb.

The kitchen was silent and empty when Fjord poked his head in. The kitchen fire was built up a bit, and the kettle had recently been used. There were dishes in the washbasin, and the remnants of flour dusting the counter, but neither Caleb nor his breakfast project were present

He made his way to the living room, where he found Caleb curled on the end of the couch with a book on his knees and a blanket wrapped over him. Fjord stood behind him and tapped the top of Caleb’s head.

“What happened to baking?”

Caleb looked up, bemused. Fjord framed Caleb’s face in his hands, and leaned down for a kiss. Caleb huffed a laugh against his lips.

“The dough has to rise for a while first. What happened to sleep?”

Fjord shrugged, sitting down on the couch next to Caleb. Obligingly, Caleb closed his book and stretched his legs out so Fjord could lay his head on Caleb’s lap. Caleb’s hands rested on his chest and in his hair, respectively, and Fjord closed his eyes with a smile.

“Got lonely. Awful cold up there without you.”

“I see,” Caleb said. “So, missing your hot water bottle, you came down here to sleep on my lap? I hate to break it to you, but I’m going to have to get up in a little bit.”

Fjord shifted onto his side, snaking his arms around Caleb’s waist. “You’ll have to drag me into the kitchen if you want to get me off your lap.”

Caleb laughed truly then, and Fjord hugged him a bit tighter, hiding his own smile under his arm.

“Well then, I guess we won’t be having sticky buns after all.”

“Low blow, Widogast, I was just getting comfortable. But if you’re going to play that card,” he sighed heavily, like it was a huge imposition, “I suppose I can oblige you.”

“So gracious, thank you very much, oh kind sir.”

“Made your whole day, didn’t I?”

Caleb just hummed and opened his book back up, and they sat like that for a little while longer. Absently, Caleb’s free hand came down and started stroking the shorn fuzz on the side of Fjord’s head. Fjord lay there, content, listening to Caleb’s breathing and watching the light get brighter in the room.

Whatever internal clock ran in Caleb’s head went off, and he patted Fjord’s temple. “Come on, time to get up.”

“Alright, if you say so,” he said, reluctantly sitting up and rolling his shoulders. “You want any help?”

“That would be lovely, actually,” Caleb said, and they both went into the kitchen.

The space wasn’t overly large, just big enough for the two of them to work in it together without tripping over each other. “Homey as shit”, Beau had called it on one of her visits, and while she was being a little bit snarky, she was right.

“If you don’t mind starting on the filling, I’m going to ready the dough.”

Frumpkin was stretched out in front of the oven, warming himself against the stone. Thankfully, Caleb had figured out how to summon Frumpkin in such a way that he didn’t send Fjord into an allergic fit, so the cat had become a steady presence in the home. For a fey creature he was very fond of mundane physical comforts, and he scarcely raised his head as the two of them started working.

Caleb very carefully stood in front of him and reached up to the space beside the chimney, pulling down a cloth-covered bowl.

“I don’t mind at all, tell me what to do.”

Caleb pointed him to where he’d placed the ingredients, and Fjord set to mixing while Caleb rolled his sleeves past his elbows and dusted the spare space of the counter with flour.

“Watch where you get that,” Fjord teased, and a wicked smirk crossed Caleb’s face. It was a familiar expression, albeit more commonly seen on Jester’s face; it invariably meant trouble for whoever was nearest, and right now Fjord was in the blast zone.

“Don’t you dare—“ He started to say, but it was already too late; Caleb stuck his fingers in the flour bowl and flicked a healthy pinch of it at the side of Fjord’s head.

The cloud slowly settled, and Fjord shook his head hard to get as much off as he could. His hair flopped into his face, and he blew the locks back as he reached for the flour himself.

“Oh it’s on now,” he said, and made a quick swipe at Caleb’s hair.

Caleb squawked, and at the sound of alarm Frumpkin sprung up and beat a hasty retreat, fearing for the sanctity of his fur in the ensuing skirmish. A wise course of action, because even though the fight only lasted a few seconds, there was flour on every surface within five feet of them. Caleb opened the door and stood outside on the stoop to shake the flour out of his hair, tying it back with a bit of leather cord from around his wrist. He looked back at Fjord and smiled impishly, the dawn light painting him like an idol in rose and gold. Smiles were much more common on Caleb’s face now, and Fjord was struck by how much they had both changed over the years, for the better.

His heart suddenly felt very full and without another word, Fjord crossed the floor to the threshold and pulled Caleb into a tight hug, pressing kisses to his cheek. Caleb freed his arms and wrapped them around Fjord in turn, holding him just as close.

“Love you,” he muttered into Caleb’s hair.

“I love you too,” Caleb replied, his voice muffled.

It was something they said fairly often, but Fjord never stopped feeling that swoop in his stomach. Caleb gave him one last little squeeze and loosed his arms, leaning back to look Fjord in the face.

“We should actually start with the baking now, I suppose.”

“Yeah, for real this time.”

They stepped apart and got back to where they were each working. The recipe was one they had made dozens of times, and while they still had the small card with Caleb’s precise writing on it, they scarcely needed it now. Caleb uncovered the bowl of dough and turned it out onto the counter. The dough looked silky smooth and overstuffed, full of air until Caleb pounded it down to the counter and began working it flat. Fjord watched for a bit as he kneaded it down and rolled it out, watched the movement of Caleb’s shoulders under his shirt and the steady, practiced flex of his hands.

Caleb must have felt his gaze, because he looked over his shoulder to meet Fjord’s eyes and a blush dusted the top of his cheeks. Caught out, Fjord felt his own face warm up.

“Go on then,” Caleb said, trying to sound chiding but coming up short in his fluster. “You’re not going to make me do all the work, are you?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Fjord stuttered, getting back to the mix. It was quick enough that he was done with the sugar and spices and had softened the butter by the time Caleb had completely rolled out the dough.

Fjord spread the butter out in a thin layer and scattered the sandy sugar over top. It wasn’t much, in the grand scheme of things, but the sauce the rolls would be baked in was so much that they didn’t need a lot in the middle. Caleb rolled up the dough and cut the log into buns, setting them on the tray to rise a second time.

“Now we wait,” Caleb said, wiping down the counter. “Although I suppose it would be prudent to make the sauce now, so it’s ready by the time we need to bake.”

Together they gathered the other ingredients, measuring and pouring them into the little copper saucepan on the stove. Caleb slowly stirred the mixture and watched it like a hawk.

Fjord stood behind and rested his hands on Caleb’s hips, hooking his chin over his husband’s shoulder, watching the sauce melt down.

“I’m glad you decided to join me,” Caleb said, leaning back ever so slightly against Fjord’s chest.

“Me too,” Fjord said.

“It feels a little silly; we spend all day together, but there’s something precious about stealing a bit of extra time like this.” He craned his neck, pressing a kiss to Fjord’s lips. “Feels a bit like we’ve snuck away from the world. It’s a little bit like the old days.”

Caleb tossed the chopped nuts in and gave the mix one final swirl, turning gently in Fjord’s hands to grab a trivet and put the pot on the counter.

“I agree,” Fjord said, following Caleb step for step as he moved, like a dance. “Part of me expects someone to come in and tell us to stop being gross and just cook breakfast.”

Caleb turned to face Fjord, laughing softly at the memory. “I’m amazed we ever lived that down,” he said.

“Did we?” He asked, smiling broadly. “I figured we just got enough ammo on the rest of them they decided to a ceasefire.”

“Maybe so,” Caleb conceded. “Come on, I’ve got a book to finish.”

This time Caleb shooed Fjord into sitting on the couch, and lay down with his head in Fjord’s lap. Fjord settled one hand on Caleb’s sternum and rested his chin on the other, watching his husband unerringly open to the page he’d left off on and start reading again with his book held above his head.

“Awful cruel of you to hide that pretty face,” Fjord said, tapping the spine of the book.

Caleb lowered the book just enough to look up at him and roll his eyes. “It would be rather difficult to read if I held it anywhere else, charmer.”

“Must be good if you’re willing to cloister yourself away with it. What are you reading?” Caleb had struck up a friendship with the bookseller in the next town over who seemed to have a knack for finding the most obscure and interesting books, and it felt like Caleb was always reading something new.

“A fiction about the founding of Ank’Harel, the capitol of Marquet. Apparently the founder of the city is the subject of no small amount of speculation, to the point of books being written making guesses about their life.”

“Sounds interesting.” Fjord had been to Marquet a couple times, sailing on the Tide’s Breath, but Ank’Harel was far inland so he had never seen the city or gotten to know much about it. “Would you mind reading it aloud?”

“Not at all, let me start at the beginning of the chapter.”

Caleb’s voice when he read was smooth and even, his Zemnian accent getting stronger the deeper he got into the story. His voice resonated in his chest, humming under Fjord’s hand as he described sweeping dunes and vast skies, of the hero-king making their way through trials and hardship to secure their kingdom.

Fjord was fully invested in the story when Caleb reached the end of a chapter and closed the book.  “Time to put the rolls in the oven,” He said, sitting up.

Fjord pressed on Caleb’s chest, trying to keep him reclined. “You’re joking.”

“I assure you, I’m not. I wouldn’t be stopping unless I absolutely had to, trust me.” He sat up and patted Fjord’s thigh. “Won’t be five minutes, hang tight.”

True to his word, he was back very quickly, with a warm smell of cinnamon and bread following behind him. He lay back down on Fjord’s lap, reaching a hand up to stroke his cheek.

“I don’t know if we have enough time to read another chapter, but we can laze about for a bit.”

“Sounds good to me.”

They passed the rest of the time in silence and idle conversation in turns, and occasionally Fjord leaned down to kiss Caleb’s forehead, cheek, lips. He stole one last kiss when Caleb told him the rolls were done. Caleb hooked his hand around the back of Fjord’s neck and held him there, drawing the kiss out into something warm and lazy that stoked a fire in his belly.

“I love you,” Caleb said, patting Fjord’s hand where it rested on his heart.

Fjord leaned down, kissing him softly. “Love you too.”

“Come on, let’s have breakfast.”

[djinn-and-djuice]

Jayce and I organized a widofjord exchange for Valentine’s day over on twitter, and since it’s (finally) the big day, we get to post our stories! This is a gift for @its3amalready​, with the prompt “ Fjord is overwhelmed by the Ruby of the Sea's suggestions about him and Jester while Caleb is sporting his fancy disguise and is his calmest most charming self -- drinks are had, confessions are made” (ao3 link)

[set during episode 33-ish]

forthcoming

~*~

Fjord wasn’t new to the social scene, alright? He knew how to handle himself in a crowd of strangers, knew how to get along and make a good impression. He could even carry himself in the fancier echelons of society on charm alone.

This, though? This was a lot.

They’d come to the Lavish Chateau to meet Jester’s mother, and hopefully find a place to stay the night. Of course, they’d had to clean up a bit to get in the door. Thankfully, a little illusion magic was accepted just as readily.

And damn, did Caleb clean up nice. He looked like one of the young naval officers who would speak to Vandran on occasion; all proper posture, sharp dress, and protocol, occasionally broken by stolen smiles at Fjord, if he was lucky. He stood straighter than usual, his hair was pulled out of his face, and sitting in that dining room he looked for all the world like he was no stranger to lavish evenings with legendary courtesans.

“So, Fjord...”

And, speaking of whom, the Ruby of the Sea was every ounce as beautiful and charming as the stories had said. It was hard not to be a little flustered by her presence, tempered as it was by the fact that she was his dear friend’s mother.

“Yes?” He asked, tearing his eyes away from where Caleb was talking with Yasha as she sat down at the table across from him. As the evening had worn on they moved into one of the Chateau’s parlor rooms, each of them in turn conversing privately with Marion. It was his turn now, apparently.

“Jester mentioned that she has been traveling with you the longest, you are from the coast?”

“Yes ma’am, from Port Damali, in fact. Have you ever been?” he couldn’t imagine that a worldly woman like her hadn’t been to Port Damali, but she shook her head sadly.

“No, I have not.”

There was more there, Fjord was almost certain. But he was equally certain that it was none of his business, no he smiled and kept going.

“Well, it’s a lovely city. If you ever have a mind to go I’d be happy to tell you some good spots.”

“Thank you. It must be good to be back on the coast,” She said, smiling.

“It is. I’ve really missed seeing the ocean, and getting to show it to our friends was a treat.” He took a sip of his drink, thinking about that peaceful afternoon on the beach, and his conversation with Caleb. He hadn’t realized just how badly he’d missed it, until they’d talked.

“So the two of you traveled together all the way from Port Damali to the Empire?” She leaned in, and Fjord wondered how much of the story Jester had been able to tell her. He also wondered how colorful she had been in the telling

“Yes, we did. There’s a little town called Trostenwald, about a day’s travel from the Wuyun Gate. We got there and ran into Beau, and then met the rest of the group a couple days later. It was a long trek, I’ll tell you that much.”

“You must have had some adventure on the way there, though?” She asked, and Fjord could see that for as intrigued as she was, there was a bit of worry in her eyes.

“Some,” he conceded. “A few bandits with big ideas, but nothing we couldn’t handle. I’ll let Jester tell you the full story, but we managed without too much fuss. She can handle herself pretty well.”

She reached across the table, setting a jeweled, elegant hand over Fjord’s with a warm smile.

“I’m glad she had you with her. My little sapphire...” she trailed off, looking fondly over to where Jester and Nott were talking. “I worried about her all off on her own, but it seems like she’s found some very good companions. I would love to hear your side of the stories, though.”

They passed a good amount of time like that, with Fjord recounting the trip from Port Damali to Trostenwald, and a few of the highlights of their more recent escapades. Marion was wonderfully easy to talk to, and Fjord wanted to speak well of Jester to her.

And Marion was happy to hear all of it. She asked about everything, down to little details like the weather and how they arranged their camp. Fjord noticed the questions were shifting from being about Jester to being about him and Jester, and Fjord felt his face warm up.

It came to a real head when she leaned in and asked, “You are fond of her?” in a way that made it clear she didn’t mean ‘as a friend’.

Fjord coughed, trying both to clear his thoughts and not show how startled he was. Caleb looked up at the noise, and that was the last thing he needed, frankly.

Caleb had tied his hair back as part of the dress-up, and without anything obscuring his face his blue eyes were even more piercing when they met. Fjord made brief eye contact with him, and hoped his blush wasn’t too obvious. For his own part Caleb had a flush high on his cheekbones, probably from the drink, although the thought that he might have also been flustered by conversation was a hopeful one. Whatever he saw on Fjord’s face made him smile a bit, and he raised his glass silently. Fjord felt his face heat up just a little bit more.

Focusing back on Marion, Fjord gathered his thoughts. In all honesty, Jester’s affectionate nature was something he’d been avoiding dealing with. Addressing that would have meant addressing other feelings, and that was something too daunting to risk.

Now that he was forced to put words to it, and to Jester’s beloved mother no less, it was still daunting but surprisingly simple.

“She’s a dear friend, and I’m happy to know her and travel with her,” he said, dropping his voice. “But I don’t...” he paused looking for the right way to phrase it.

It seemed Marion knew what he was getting at, and she nodded before he could finish his sentence. He focused on her face, trying to keep from glancing over where Caleb had gone back to his conversation.

“I think I see what you mean. Apologies if I made you uncomfortable,” she said, frowning slightly, probably dismayed by the faux pas.

“It’s fine,” he said, just wanting the whole thing to be done with. “I do still care, just not like that.”

“It’s better to be up-front about these things, in my experience,” she said. “To all affected parties.”

“Not all of us are as eloquent as you, ma’am,” he deflected.

“You don’t have to be eloquent, Fjord. Just honest.”

He had nothing to say to that. He just nodded, and Marion smiled encouragingly.

“Just think on it. We’ll talk again, Fjord.” She stood up, Fjord standing with her, and made her way over to Yasha. Fjord wandered over to the bar to get another drink, and think about things.

 ~*~

 The evening wore on slowly, but eventually it ended. Beau had sat down next to Fjord when Marion went to speak with Yasha, and they made vague plans for how they were going to spend their day. The comment Marion had made about the client who was bothering her was troubling, and they wanted to look into it as quickly as they could.

He couldn’t help but take notice when Marion sat down across from Caleb and they started talking. He wasn’t about to stare, but they were two captivating people. Once past the awkwardness of meetings, Caleb was charming and well-spoken, and even just watching him converse was engaging.

At his elbow, Beau scoffed.

“What?” Fjord asked, looking back at her, not having seen what she was irritated by.

She gave him a flat look, and opened her mouth to say something, but apparently thought better of it because she kept silent. “Nothing.”

“You sure?” It wasn’t like her to hold back.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” she said.

Fjord shrugged. “If you say so.”

Polishing off the last of her drink, Beau stood up. “I think I’m gonna turn in, it’s getting kinda late and we’ve got a douchebag to beat up tomorrow.”

“Sounds good, see you in the morning.”

She left, saying her goodnights as she went. Not long after, Marion went over to Jester, and they both went upstairs to catch up properly.

“You going to head up?” Caduceus asked, as the rest of the party seemed to be ready to follow suit and turn in for the evening.

“No, I think I’m gonna look out at the city for a bit. Breathe the sea air.”

Caduceus smiled. “It’s always good to be home, even for a little bit.”

Fjord wasn’t quite sure if he’d call Nicodranas home, per se, but the sentiment was the same. “Yeah,” he replied. “It is good.”

“See you in the morning, Fjord,” Caduceus bid him, and Fjord took his glass and went out to the balcony. He heard the door open and close a few more times, as the rest of the party left him alone with his thoughts.

It was only barely a balcony, to be honest-enough space for two people comfortably, three if they felt like getting real cozy. But it had a lovely view of Nicodranas, sparkling in the evening light. And if Fjord squinted, he could almost make out the Open Quay, and the ocean just beyond it. The city was much quieter at night, without the shriek of gulls and mad rush of people coming and going, but there was still a gentle hum that he had missed, when they were on the road. There was a constant thrum of life in cities, a sense of people being close by at all hours. It was present in Zadash as well, and soothed the part of him that missed being on a crowded ship. Fjord leaned on the rail and enjoyed the quiet scene.

“Everything alright?”

Caleb’s voice from behind him was unmistakable, and Fjord turned to look at him. He was hard to make out, as backlit as he was. Fjord couldn’t really discern the expression on his face, and he only hoped his own face wasn’t doing anything unfortunate. He had thought he was alone.

“Yeah, just getting some fresh air.”

“Mind if I join you?”

“Not at all.”

Caleb walked up, leaning against the rail in mimicry of Fjord’s own posture. He was still wearing the illusory outfit, and as much as he enjoyed it Fjord wondered how many spell slots Caleb had gone through for the sake of keeping up appearances.

“What a day, huh?” he asked, giving Fjord a sidelong glance.

“Right?” Fjord replied. “It was one thing to know this was the life Jester used to lead, but—“

“It’s truly another thing to see it firsthand,” Caleb nodded. “Marion is a wonderful woman, to let so many strangers into her home and welcome us all so warmly.”

“She really is. Did you have a good conversation with her?”

Caleb’s face turned pensive, and after a moment he nodded. “I did. It’s hard to put properly into words—“

“Hard to believe you’re ever short for words,” Fjord cut in.

Caleb pursed his lips, but went on. “You’re kind. It is only that I thought I came here ready for anything, and yet I was still surprised. She gives very good advice.”

That seemed to be going around.

“How about you?” Caleb asked, tilting his glass towards Fjord before taking a sip out of it. “It seemed like the two of you had a very good conversation.”

“We did, I suppose.”

“You suppose?”

“It’s like you said, only I can’t really say I was ready for anything. She’s real sharp, and I guess I was just a little surprised to be, uh, seen like that.”

Caleb hummed thoughtfully, but didn’t say anything else. For lack of anything else to say, Fjord took a sip of his own drink. His head was pleasantly fuzzy this far into the evening, but he wasn’t so gone that he worried about saying anything he might regret.

Although with Caleb standing so close to him, he was more worried he might say too much.

Marion’s advice echoed in the back of his head, and Fjord sighed. It came out louder than he intended, and Caleb gave him a worried look.

“Everything alright, my friend?”

He was still Caleb, even with the glamour; he had just been polished up a bit. Everything that caught Fjord’s eye before was still there, only now on clearer display. There was still the same edge in his gaze, the same solemn turn to his mouth, the same careful and measured counsel in his words. If he leaned in, Fjord would still smell dust and books and odd, discordantly fragrant spell components. 

Gods and ancestors, he was thinking about smelling Caleb, he couldn’t keep this up much longer.

“I’m fine, just thinking.” The words were there, on the tip of his tongue. He took a drink to brace himself.

“Well, know that I’m here if you want to talk about it. If there’s anything I can do to help, just ask.”

Fjord felt like he was standing on the edge of a dock, ready to dive into the water. There was the same ball of tension in his gut, the wound up spring of energy at the thought of this going horribly wrong.

Honest, be honest.

“You’re very charming, you know that?”

Caleb seemed surprised, which certainly made two of them. It wasn’t how he wanted to lead into this, necessarily, but his heart was apparently tired of the dithering and took the reins.

“Oh?” Was all he said in reply, and Fjord could see the warmth in his face deepen.

“Yeah. You’ve, uh, got a real way with people when you want to.” Caleb gave him a skeptical look, and he went on. “Like with Ophelia, back in Shady Creek. I have no idea what you guys talked about the first time, but when we were getting ready to escort her back to Zadash she was really only interested in talking to you. The rest of us might as well have been decorative.”

Caleb said nothing, so Fjord kept going. “It’s captivating, honestly.”

“Captivating.” Under any other circumstances, Fjord would have been pleased at rendering Caleb speechless. Right now it just felt like he was stumbling off a cliff.

“Yeah. It has been kinda hard to focus on anything else all night what with that, and with how good you look all dressed up.” He gestured up and down at Caleb.

This was it. There was absolutely no going back now. Words spilled out of him on one long run-on rush.

“And I’ve been trying to keep it to myself, a bit, because I didn’t want to make things weird in the group or uncomfortable with you, and I’ve been kinda just figuring things out overall, but this shindig all really brought it to a head and Marion said I oughta be honest. So this isn’t how I planned on this going at-fuckin-all but now that we’re here I might as well lay it out on the line.”

A deep breath. Fjord forced himself to look up and find Caleb’s eyes. For his own part, Caleb was gripping the railing with one white knuckled hand and staring directly at Fjord. He hadn’t said anything, or indeed made any sound whatsoever, but he also hadn’t walked away.

“I like you, Caleb. I mean, really like you. I think I have for a while. I think you’re incredible.” He dragged a hand through his hair, finally out of words. “That’s it. That’s all I’ve got. Please say something.”

Caleb nodded, but stayed quiet. He opened his mouth a couple times but couldn’t quite manage to say anything. The calm, confident demeanor he’d been carrying around all evening seemed to have vanished.

“I, uh, hm.” Caleb knocked back the last bit of his drink and set the glass on the floor behind him. When he stood back up his eyes were downcast, but he slowly rose to look Fjord in the face.

“I am not nearly so great as you think I am, but I am certainly flattered, and, well. Grateful, or rather, pleased that you think so. It certainly makes my own feelings less awkward.”

“Pardon?” Fjord had checked out a little bit after Caleb had said he was flattered, bracing himself for the inevitable rejection. “Your own feelings?”

If he had thought Caleb was flushed earlier, he was positively incandescent now.

“Ja. I had hoped to be subtle about them for the very same reasons you did. I did not wish to make you uncomfortable, or jeopardize the balance of the group.”

Fjord was still a little stuck on the revelation that Caleb has been crushing on him, so he held up a hand and said “Wait. Feelings?”

That pulled Caleb out of his flustered state, and he looked at Fjord like he’d suddenly sprouted another head. For all the man had a difficult time starting, he was certainly going now. It reminded Fjord of the few times Caleb felt strongly enough about something to stress his opinion and argue it to the group. He spoke less like he was articulating his perspective and more like he was stating plain fact.

“Fjord, you cannot be blind to how handsome you are. You are clever, and charming, and loyal. You turn heads wherever we go. Anyone would be very lucky to win your notice.”

“And you thought I wouldn’t notice you?”

“I work rather hard to be beneath notice. More to the point, I thought you had noticed someone else and I did not wish to put you in a bad position.”

There were a few things in that statement that troubled Fjord, but they would deal with that later. More pressing was that he knew exactly what Caleb meant when he said “noticed”, and he winced a bit.

“Yeah, I can see how you’d think that. She’s real dear to me, but not like that. I don’t know how she sees me but that’s something we’ll have to talk out.”

“I’ve heard great things about honesty,” Caleb said, the barest smile at the corners of his eyes.

Fjord laughed softly, stepping closer to Caleb. The balcony felt cozy now, almost intimate despite being an open platform over the city. “So have I.”

“And, if we are being perfectly honest, I would like for you to kiss me now.” Caleb reached out and smoothed a hand over Fjord’s shoulder, smiling softly.

“Well, such honesty is to be rewarded,” Fjord smirked, leaning in.

“Oh don’t start,” Caleb laughed, grabbing the collar of Fjord’s shirt and yanking him in the last couple of inches.

And there was nothing else to say after that.

[djinn-and-djuice]

guess what? it’s more widofjord. this time featuring haircuts! what can I say, I’m a sucker for mutual pining and non-sexual intimacy. set during the trip back to Nicodranas between ep 47 and 48. (ao3 link)

[no spoilers, makes only vague mention of canon]

two bits

~*~

They don't talk, really; Caleb needs to concentrate and Fjord doesn't want to move too much. Nott's dagger isn't the best razor, sharp though it may be. The silence is comfortable, and they both enjoy listening to the happenings on the ship outside of their quiet oasis.

Having Caleb's undivided attention is almost a physical sensation. Fjord is used to scrutiny, used to hating it and shrinking from it, but this is different. As laid bare as he feels, the fact that Caleb is the one doing the looking is pleasant, even comfortable. Part of him is flattered, almost shy at the fact that Caleb will remember this moment forever.

He’d initially intended on having Beau help clean up the sides, given her experience maintaining her own haircut, but she’d been busy making the rounds with the crew to check in on the state of morale. Caleb had found him wandering the ship at loose ends and asked him what he was looking for. So now Caleb is here, shirtsleeves rolled past his elbows, somewhat paradoxical next to the bandages still wrapped up his arms, doing a damn good job cleaning him up.

Caleb's hands are careful and deft, brushing the long hair over the top and separating it from the shaggy sides. Once or twice he pauses to stroke it, raking his blunt nails against Fjord's scalp. It's not dissimilar to how he scratches Frumpkin, and Fjord understands why that cat purrs so damn loudly now. He almost falls asleep under Caleb's ministrations.

"Come on," Caleb murmurs, and if Fjord didn't know better he'd swear there was the hint of a laugh at the edge of his voice, "stay with me here."

"I'm trying, I promise," he replies.

"Alright," Caleb gently tilts his head around, guiding Fjord to look down at the floor while he cuts the back. He makes quick work of it, either that or Fjord zones out again and comes back as Caleb is brushing the stray hairs to the floor and taking Fjord's head in two gentle hands.

"Last bit, unless you want me to trim the top," he says, brushing everything into alignment. Fjord feels his fingers stall in the patch of salt at his temple, rubbing a small circle among the grey hairs.

"If you don't mind, could probably do with a trim there as well. Keep me looking ship-shape."

There's a lot they haven't discussed. Conversations that keep getting pushed aside in favor of more pressing concerns.

"Will do."

This is the first moment of quiet they've had in what feels like a month, and Fjord doesn't want to disturb it. The drag of the blade picks up again, and his thoughts simmer. All the words he wants to say are sitting on his tongue, but he forces them back for now. He wants to ask about Caleb’s plans, if he has anyone in the Empire he’s worried about now that the war has gotten worse, how he feels about everything that’s happened at sea so far. He wants counsel, wants to get some sense of where they stand.

He's noticed Caleb for a while; first as an intriguing unknown quantity, then as a source of arcane knowledge. More recently, however, things have shifted. Caleb has turned from a shady traveling companion to a trusted comrade and friend. Fjord has become keenly aware that, despite Caleb's claims to the contrary, behind the brusque and withdrawn shell lies a sincerely kind and charming man. And, well. Fjord isn't about to pretend that Caleb isn't handsome, under the dust.

Caleb brushes the stray trimmings back with a gentle hand and Fjord tries to keep from leaning into it too obviously.

"Hang on, let me just find some scissors. I'll be right back." He pats Fjord's shoulder and is out of the cabin without another word. 

Fjord is seized by the sudden urge to bury his face in his hands and groan. Instead, he brushes his fingers over the freshly shaved sides and thinks. He doesn't want to upset this fragile balance they've found, but he's on his last nerve. The trouble is that for as comfortable as he seems to be with physical closeness, Caleb is powerfully skittish; and Fjord has no damn clue how he's going to react to this sort of thing. As much as he talks about "calculated risks" and seems willing to throw his lot in with this party for better or worse, he's not too keen on getting personal. Assuming Caleb would want to get personal with him is a leap he’s not sure he wants to risk.

And something like this would be very personal indeed.

Caleb comes back then, and Fjord twists in his seat to see him frowning at a pair of beat-up iron scissors.

"Something wrong?" Fjord asks.

"These are all that we had on board, but they’re terribly dull," Caleb says, and looking close, Fjord can see some decently sized nicks in the blade.

Before he can ask if Caleb has some sort of plan, he watches as Caleb props the scissors open with one hand. With the other, he pinches a blade between his fingers and slides them along the length of it. Fjord sees how the scissors shine with new life in the wake of this gesture, and it hits him that Caleb sharpened and repaired the blades with nothing more than a bit of magic and his bare hands. It's a casual display of delicate finesse and sheer arcane power, and Fjord’s mouth goes a little dry.

"So, just tidy it up?" Caleb asks as he tests the motion of the scissors, and Fjord takes a moment to realize he has to answer.

"Oh, uh- yes please." He collects himself a bit more. "That was mighty impressive."

It's Caleb's turn to be thrown for a loop now, and Fjord is treated to the sight of a blush dusting over his usually pale face. It's adorable.

"Just a bit of basic transmutation," he says, ducking his head and moving to stand directly behind Fjord.

 "All the same, it's quite a skill," he says as he lets Caleb move his head to the angle he needs.

Caleb just hums in reply, which Fjord counts as a win. He sets to trimming, which is a more involved task than shaving. Caleb flits around Fjord, checking lines and making sure everything is even. Making conversation is easier, though, without a dagger behind his ear.

"How did you learn to do this?"

Caleb huffs softly, another not-quite laugh. "I used to cut quite a sharp figure in my youth."

Fjord believes it, too. He imagines what Caleb would look like now, with his hair cut and his scruff trimmed. He remembers how Caleb made himself look, that night they met Jester’s mother.

"I bet you were quite a looker," Fjord says. Those words he's been trying to hold back slip through his teeth and before he even knows what he's doing he says, "You're certainly one now."

The scissors pause mid-cut, and he sees Caleb's free hand freeze in his peripheral vision.

"You're just saying that because I have a pair of razor-sharp scissors next to your temple."

"I assure you I'm not," Fjord says, trying to snag control back over the situation, and the gentle snips resume. He can't see Caleb's face, which makes this both easier and harder to say. "I remember how you cleaned up, back in Nicodranas."

Caleb swings around to Fjord's front, to trim the not-quite-bangs he's been growing out. His focus is intense, but settled on the task at hand, and decidedly not making eye contact. His face is red as a brand.

"And I mean that," Fjord goes on, looking at Caleb's scarlet ear rather than his face. "Been meaning to tell you, but...well. Haven't really had the chance."

Caleb makes a couple more decisive snips of Fjord's hair, sets the scissors down and crouches to meet Fjord's seated eye level.

He stares at Fjord then, an intense searching gaze; like he's trying to see if Fjord is actually telling the truth. Whatever he sees there seems to satisfy him, and he reaches out to brush Fjord's hair back into place. It's a gentle gesture, even tender, at odds with the wrinkle in his brow.

“Is that all you’d been meaning to tell me?” Caleb asks, cocking his head.

There's a weight to that sentence that Fjord wasn't expecting. Fjord hears the meaning behind it, or at least he thinks he does. It almost feels like they're speaking in code, or thieves' cant. He's only working with half the codex, and any mistake would sink him. Asking to speak plainly would destroy the delicate balance, so all he can do is tread carefully.

“One of the things,” he says. He makes a gamble, and reaches a hand out to Caleb. He waits for a long second before Caleb’s hand settles into his and holds it. His hand is warm and calloused, and his long fingers lace together with Fjord’s.

"You are quite handsome yourself," Caleb says, his voice low, tentative almost. "I feel you don't need me to tell you that, though."

"It means more though, coming from you."

“Does it?” It’s not quite a question, and Caleb is looking at him a bit like Fjord is the puzzling one, like Caleb is the one worried and not quite sure where he stands.

The thought that he and Caleb have been dancing around each other this whole time, standing in the exact same position but somehow opposite, boggles him. The entire time, he’d thought his feelings would be, at best, unreturned.

“Yeah,” he says, trying to hide the shake in his voice at the sudden realization, “it really does.”

Apparently things could occasionally turn out better than he’d hoped. He grips Caleb’s hand a little tighter, dares to lean in a little closer.

“Anything else you need?” Caleb asks, and the smile on his face is a rare one, so gentle and peaceful, and Fjord would do anything to keep that smile on his face.

“Well, he says, tilting his head a bit, “There was one thing, if it’s not an imposition.”

Caleb’s eyes are impossibly blue. “I think I have some idea,” he says, “no imposition at all.”

His free hand comes up and traces along the line of Fjord’s jaw, pulling him in. The kiss is soft, sweet and tentative. When they part Caleb is staring at him again; that feeling of focus, of Caleb committing the moment to memory, pulls him in again for a second kiss, then a third.

There are plans to be made, and things they need to discuss before they get to port. But they don’t need to talk just yet. For now, they’ve said enough.

[djinn-and-djuice]

so a while back jayce and I were talking about caleb and fjord retiring and settling down together, and caleb going grey, and this happened. it’s very short, and very sweet, and it’s been sitting in my notes too long and I HAVE to share it. (ao3 link)

[no spoilers! set post-canon]

exchange rate

~*~

Caleb goes grey a bit before his time, to be honest. The product of a hard life and deep stress, of years and years living with a shadow over his heart, manifesting as veins of silver in the rich copper of his hair just as he hits middle age. It comes in suddenly, a shock of it taking over his bangs almost overnight. Caleb pulls on it from time to time, staring in the mirror with a frown on his face, but Fjord thinks it looks good.

"Striking," he says one morning, and when Caleb gives him an unimpressed look at his choice of words, clarifies; "makes you look distinguished, and it gives people a glimpse of how interesting you are."

That just makes Caleb roll his eyes, but Fjord can see the slight flush in his cheeks and the curl at the corners of his mouth, so Fjord counts that as a win.

There are creases in Caleb's face as well, worry marks in his brow and crows' feet around his eyes. The lines around his mouth are harder to see, covered as they are by his beard, but when he smiles Fjord can see the laugh lines reaching up his face like a pair of jubilant arms reaching to the sky.

But no matter what, Fjord cannot manage to look at Caleb and think "old". If anything, he seems younger now than he did when they met. He's changed, since those early days when the Mighty Nein were sleeping on the ground and traveling in a rickety cart filled with whatever random shit they thought they could hawk for a bit of coin. He was thinner back then, almost cruelly sharp; lean both in form and spirit. The years since have still been hard but nevertheless much kinder, and they've both softened the hard edges the world carved on them. Fjord is grateful that they have both lived long enough to be able to look back on those days, and to see how they've all grown.

Even now, as Caleb naps next to the fire, glasses still on and book resting in his lap, he looks younger than he did all those years ago in Trostenwald. His face is peaceful and smooth, untroubled by dreams. Fjord works quietly in the small kitchen, stealing fond glances as he cooks. Before, Caleb would wake at the smallest noise, lurching into frightened awareness at every turn; now he sleeps soundly, not stirring once. Fjord pauses in his work to walk over to Caleb and press a gentle kiss to his forehead and brush one long silver lock out of his face.

Fjord misses adventuring from time to time, the same way he misses sailing. The thrill of danger pulls on him occasionally. The call of riches, glory, and far off lands sings to him every now and again. But louder still is the song of home and hearth, of hard-earned peace and steadfast love. And while it may not be as lucrative as the platinum of a deep dungeon, far more valuable to Fjord is the silver in Caleb's hair.

[djinn-and-djuice]

Happy new year! Starting off 2019 strong with the darkest fic I’ve ever posted! Yaaaaaaaaay. Here’s the detailed info I put on ao3:

Man, when Liam shared Caleb's backstory, my first thought was "this is some Red Room shit, right here", so I wanted to work with that a bit. This has been a compelling, if difficult, fic to write, and I hope you like it. Maybe "like" isn't the right word, but I hope it gives you something.

Here's the deal: this fic contains scenes of clearly described torture, abuse, and all of that is centered in the effects of brainwashing. The characters in this story who are being abused do not view it as such, which may be particularly upsetting to some. Please do what is best for you.

Still with me? Awesome. (ao3 link)

[contains info from episode 18 of campaign two. is that still a spoiler?]

~*~

matriculation

~*~

It was meant to be an example. When one of them failed, wasn’t quick enough to learn a new spell, spoke out of turn, or-gods forbid-embarrassed Trent in front of one of his colleagues, they were punished.

Caleb hadn’t been quick enough on his somatic drills, so to impress upon him the need to sharpen the dexterity in his off hand, Trent quickly and ruthlessly took a hammer to his dominant one.

It hurt, the pain a white-hot fire that chewed up his arm and tore through his thoughts, but Caleb held himself together. This was necessary. He would go back to the others, and they would train harder, and he would not make this mistake twice. Caleb would take this punishment and the three of them, together, would turn it into greater things. It would make them better.

He bore the whole experience and barely made a sound, and when it was done he could see how Trent was impressed with his strength. He even managed to keep his battered hand by his side, resisting the childish impulse to cradle it to his chest.

After he was done, Trent dismissed Caleb, and he walked down the hall to Astrid and Eodwulf. The three of them shared one room in the house, just enough space for three beds, three desks, and three dressers. It was a tiny haven, and as he pulled open the door to step inside the other two were waiting for him. Seated on the edge of Astrid’s bed facing the door, she and Eodwulf had been waiting since Trent led him away. He had been in that same seat many times, waiting for one of the others to return.

There were no words to say, no words that needed to be said, but still Astrid sighed his name softly and pulled Caleb close, while Eodwulf went to retrieve the medic’s kit. Caleb could see the tension in his shoulders, in the white knuckled grip on the wooden box as he brought it over. It never got easier, seeing each other hurt, as much as they knew it was for the best.

Astrid sat against the headboard behind him, pulling him in to lean back against her chest while Eodwulf worked on cleaning the wounds from his punishment. She patted his hair with one hand, gently soothing him with her other arm wrapped around his waist. She continued as Eodwulf knelt beside the bed, cleaned the broken skin and examined the damage. He gently splinted Caleb’s broken fingers, pressing a kiss to each digit when he was done.

“Oh, my darling,” Eodwulf murmured in Zemnian. While outside of their room, they were instructed to speak only Common. Inside, when it was just the three of them, they spoke their mother tongue exclusively.

Caleb leaned forward out of Astrid’s embrace and pressed a kiss to the top of Eodwulf’s head.

“I will be fine, my dearest.”

With one lingering brush over his shoulder, Astrid left the two of them to get changed into her sleeping clothes. Caleb pulled Eodwulf close as best he could and pressed their foreheads together without saying anything, just breathing the same air.

After a moment of quiet comfort they parted, each slowly going through the motions of preparing for sleep, finishing with Caleb and Eodwulf climbing into the same bed.

They had never hidden anything from each other. They had never been able to. They tended each other’s wounds and bathed in close proximity enough times that they knew the shapes of each other’s bodies as well as they knew their own. And even if they’d had separate rooms, their training had bound the three of them so closely together that there was no space for secrets, and even less for shame. He would have been hard pressed to explain it to anyone else, but Caleb had no qualms in lying with Eodwulf here, where it was just the three of them. They were silent as shadows, and it wasn’t as though she was watching.

Likewise, there was no hesitance in Eodwulf’s movements as he pressed Caleb into the pillows, mindful of his hand and the older bruises they both still carried. Caleb had been taught the lesson, but they all had all of them learned.

/\/\/\

Zadash was maddeningly crowded. The Innerstead Sprawl was aptly named, and Caleb only kept himself from getting completely turned around through the grounding presences of Astrid and Eodwulf beside him. Caleb flexed his hand, recently healed with magic to prevent scarring, and focused on the pull of tendons to tune out the cacophony of people on all sides.

Over his shoulder he could feel the looming Zauberspire, where Trent had gone to tend to some business. He had loosed the three of them on the city, saying that he had been alerted to the presence of dangerous dissidents somewhere near the Pentamarket, and that the three of them were to deal with it.

“Without intervention, these rabble-rousers will kill innocents. You are to find them and lead the guard to them. Do not let any escape. I expect results by the time I am done, or I will be very displeased.”

It hadn’t been easy, but Caleb knew how to be charming enough to get in the door without suspicion, and Astrid could play skittish and weak well enough to get guards down and root out true intentions, while Eodwulf circled around the back to make sure no one snuck away to sound a warning.

The location of the first hideout in hand, it became a race to alert the crownsguard and get to the house quickly enough to not raise suspicion. Eodwulf split up with them to make better time, and they made it all the way to the eastern quarter of the city in what had to be a record pace.

Tucked in an alley, the two of them watched as crownsguard swarmed the first hideout. Over the shouts of alarm and clatter of a scuffle breaking out, Caleb noticed the symbols carved into the doorframe that matched the ones of the first hideout, subtle glyphs that he now knew meant revolution. The rebels they had spoken to operated in cells, to keep potential damage contained. But now that he knew their markings, all the isolation in the world wouldn’t help them.

“Come, there have to be more hiding nearby,” he whispered in Astrid’s ear, pointing out the markings.

He clutched Astrid’s hand and they grinned at each other, high on adrenaline and the thrill of the chase. Eodwulf caught up to them then, laughing breathlessly. He slung an arm around Astrid’s waist and kissed Caleb full on the mouth.

“Didn’t keep you waiting too long, did I?” He asked.

“We almost continued the hunt without you,” Caleb replied breezily.

“We certainly can’t have that. But I’m here now. Where to next?”

Grabbing a passing crownsguard, Caleb explained their business and told him to spread the word of what they were doing, and have the Innerstead guards be ready at a moment’s notice.

“We’ll deal with them, you’ll just have to move in and collect.” He didn’t wait for a response.

They ran, then, silent as shadows. Like hounds after a scent, like hawks on the wind, they wove through alleys and byways, before descending on the next cell of dissidents. The good people of the Empire would sleep safer tonight.

/\/\/\

During their private education, Trent had articulated to them that he expected them to reflect upon not only themselves and their own actions, but upon each other as well. Waiting left a lot of time for such contemplation, and at the moment all of Caleb’s thoughts were focused on Astrid. His love for her was very different from his love for Eodwulf, but no less fierce. She was a part of him, now. It was strange to think how far they’d come, from three strangers who happened to live in the same town.

Sitting on the edge of her bed, holding Eodwulf’s hand and waiting for her to return from her punishment, he racked his brain to think if he’d ever even seen her before, in Blumenthal. She was likely as much of an indoor child as he had been, and Eodwulf as well. When he couldn’t recall her face even in his festival memories, he switched to counting the beat of Eodwulf’s pulse against his palm. One-two. Three-four. Five-six.

It was around two fifty eight-two fifty nine when the door to their room creaked open slowly, and Astrid stepped in. Her long, beautiful hair was tied up and out of the way- presumably to keep it from dripping on the floorboards, as she was soaked nearly to the waist. In the weak lamplight her face was deathly pale, and he could see the blue tinge to her lips.

One of the rebels from Zadash had died while she was interrogating him, accidentally suffocated before he could answer any truly valuable questions. Trent had taken her aside after that, to impress upon her the limits of a mortal body and give her a deeper understanding of how heavy a hand she should, or in this case shouldn’t, wield. He was also dissatisfied at the loss of information, but that went without saying.

She closed the door behind her and managed a couple more steps before Caleb was on his feet, catching her in his arms as she coughed violently, trying to expel water and take gasping breaths at the same time.

Caleb rubbed her back, slowly leading her to sit on the edge of the bed. Eodwulf grabbed a bucket and placed it below her, as her coughing became deeper, from lower in her chest. She hunched over on her elbows, spitting up water and gasping breaths that sounded more like sobs. Caleb pressed an ear to her ribs and listened. He could hear rattling still, and thumped her back soundly. A deep, racking cough shook her entire body once, twice, and Caleb clutched her hand as the last of the water came out of her lungs.

“Come on,” Caleb said, once her breathing calmed, “let’s get you out of these wet clothes.”

Slowly, gently, they changed her out of the soaking tunic and toweled off her hair, and before long Astrid came back to them. Her voice was rough and the cadence of Zemnian did very little to soften it. Caleb felt every rasp like it was coming out of his own throat.

“We have to be up early tomorrow, you should get some sleep.”

“You need it more than we do, let us take care of you,” Eodwulf quietly replied. He gently brushed out her hair and braided it, kissing her on the head when he was done.

He stayed awake a few hours longer, listening to Astrid cough weakly, and thought this will make us better. It has to.

/\/\/\

“There are people,” Trent said to them one evening at the end of lessons, “who wish to meet you. In two weeks time there is to be a ball in the Capital, and I have a few fellows who know of my work and wish to congratulate the exemplary students who are serving our empire so well.”

It was high praise, almost unexpected from Trent’s mouth. Not wishing to show too much pride, they did nothing more in response than nod their heads. Still, the three of them sat somehow straighter in their seats, and Caleb hoped the gleam in their eyes came off as pleased but not arrogant.

“You will be permitted to dance with one another, but I expect you to make an equal effort to ingratiate yourself with the other guests. And above all, you will reflect well upon me. There will be eyes upon you that report directly to the king, so do not disappoint me.”

With a wave of his hand, they were dismissed. Slowly, silently, they filed back to their room.

“Oh, this will be fun!” Astrid said, once the door shut. “It’s been so long since we’ve been out of the cottage, and even longer since a trip to the capital.”

“And Master Ikithon wants to show us off,” Caleb added, “He has been speaking about us, and apparently we’re making him proud!”

It was a heady realization, that enough people had heard about them that their presence would be requested. Trent had told them that upon graduation they would become important members of the Empire and adjutants to the Cerberus Assembly, to think that there were other people anticipating this as well was truly invigorating.

“We’ll have to put on our best showing then,” Eodwulf mused. “Do you think we’ll be given a period in the day to practice our dancing?”

“I can only hope,” Astrid said, pulling him into an impromptu waltz. They spun slowly across the floor and Caleb watched them, climbing onto the bed to give them a little more room to maneuver. They all knew festival dances, but those would hardly be appropriate in the noble halls of Rexxentrum. The waltz was the one true formal dance they could perform, which would likely not be adequate if they were going to display Trent’s excellence as an instructor.

“Come on, Caleb,” Astrid said, twirling out of Eodwulf’s hands and towards him. A smile lit her face, and Caleb felt himself grinning back. “Dance with me!”

He took her hand and stepped close, taking her for a turn across the small floor. The three of them traded around dancing with each other for a little while longer, and Caleb could almost hear the music playing.

/\/\/\

Trent did grant them time to practice dancing, and to learn new dances as well. But with a week left before the ball, there were still lessons to conduct and not a minute of time could be allowed to go to waste.

Some of the lessons Trent taught were more hands-on than others. Magic could mostly be taught through theory and private practice, history and languages were easy enough to acquire through reading, but there were other skills Trent wanted them to acquire. Skills like outdoor survival. Interrogation.

“The best way to understand something is to endure it,” Trent explained to them, the first time he had conducted one of these lessons. Quietly, in the furthest corner of his thoughts, Caleb wondered how many scars Trent bore, or if they had all been magicked away as well.

He and Astrid were standing at Trent’s elbow in the small room in the cottage’s basement. Eodwulf was seated across from the three of them, bare to the waist and tied down to the single wooden chair in the room. Beside him was a small table with a tray of knives, each of varying sizes, a handful of long needles stuck into a black pincushion, and lengths of fine sinew cords.

“A reminder, before we begin the demonstration. The most critical part of a scenario such as this is the anticipation,” Trent intoned, beginning the lecture. “Before any physical work, one should take a minimum of three days to psychologically prepare the interviewee. However, in a pinch, it is best to simply take your time.”

One by one, he picked up each implement on the table, checking the sharpness of the edge or the taper of the point. The sinew he counted, stretched, and checked the lengths of before gently coiling it back down on the table. Caleb could feel the seconds tick by in his head, stretching out into minutes.

“There is nothing that you can do that will ever hurt more than what your interviewee can imagine. So examine each and every implement you have at your disposal, even if you don’t anticipate using it. Let them do the heavy lifting.”

“Now, we have already been over introductory techniques. Ways to begin sessions. Today, however, we are going to be refining methods for the midpoints.” He picked up one of the smaller knives, a slender-handled blade that looked almost like a scalpel, and stood behind Eodwulf.

“There are several places on the torso that, when cut, yield little more than a swift death--” He pulled a grease pencil out from a pocket and marked small dashes on Eodwulf’s skin. The scalpel glinted in the lamplight as he moved. Marking more, he continued-- “And others still that do not have enough sensitivity to yield appropriate results without employing more severe methods.”

Caleb watched intently, cataloguing every movement in his mind. They had been over these points already in discussions of theory, but seeing them mapped out gave him a deeper perspective.

“However, there are points between the two, where a delicate application of skill yield a pain that is neither too weak to be convincing nor so strong as to dissolve coherence. Let us begin.”

He slid the knife across Eodwulf’s chest, angling the blade just so to carve under and separate the skin from the flesh as well.  Blood welled and quickly ran down Eodwulf’s chest, and Caleb forced himself to focus on the lesson.

There were no questions, as he progressed. Caleb and Astrid watched intently as he worked, and Eodwulf did his best to remain silent and still for the duration of the lesson. Caleb focused on every mark Trent made, but he also noticed the sweat beading on Eodwulf’s brow, and the slow drain of color from his face. Nevertheless, Eodwulf held fast till the end of the demonstration, and Caleb felt no shortage of pride in his strength.

Trent moved between working with the knives and the needles, giving thorough explanation for the detailed applications of each, and how to use them in conjunction. Eodwulf’s blood had just begun to gather in pools on the floor when Trent finished.

The lesson complete, Trent set the last knife meticulously back in the tray. He turned on his heel and walked out, leaving Astrid and Caleb to clean up. Astrid fetched the medical kit and Caleb undid the bindings, holding Eodwulf against his chest once he was free. He could feel blood begin to seep into his shirt, but that was of little concern. Eodwulf was shaking, ever so slightly, and had gone clammy and cold.

They had been instructed to be silent in situations like this, so none of them spoke. But once Trent’s footsteps faded down the hallway Caleb cradled the back of Eodwulf’s head and held him tight, pressing kisses to his hair while Astrid began cleaning and binding the wounds. They were all clean cuts- a mercy, even if a particularly small one.

When she was done, Astrid nodded to Caleb and finished cleaning up. Caleb gently took a clean, soft robe and tucked Eodwulf’s arms into it and tied it closed, shushing him gently as the slight movement pulled at the cuts. He wrapped his hand around Eodwulf’s back and reached under his knees to pick him up off the cold stone floor. Eodwulf wasn’t particularly heavy, which was fortunate because Caleb wasn’t particularly strong.

“Not much longer,” he wanted to say, as the three of them left the basement and slowly walked back to their bedroom.

Back safely in the room, Eodwulf wrapped his arms around Caleb’s neck and clung, like Caleb was a lifeline. Caleb held back, less tightly out of concern for Eodwulf’s injuries but no less protective. He ran a hand through Eodwulf’s hair and kissed his temple, soothing him until he finally relaxed. Eodwulf didn’t cry, too exhausted even for that, but his breath stuttered and his shoulders shook the whole while.

“You need to rest, come on,” Caleb said, pulling the blankets back on the bed and helping Eodwulf get beneath them.

He kissed along the wrapped lacerations, a silent promise that none of Eodwulf’s pain had been given in vain.

“It is a gift you have given us, this wisdom,” He murmured, kissing from ribs, to sternum, to the hollow of Eodwulf’s throat. “It will go to good use.”

/\/\/\

The third day after the lesson, there was a healing potion set at Eodwulf’s place when they sat down for breakfast.

“For the remaining marks,” Trent said. “You have to be presentable for the ball.”

It wasn’t just Eodwulf who had to be presentable; all of them needed new outfits and haircuts, and appropriate pieces of jewelry. Such things could only be found in the capital, so Trent sent the three of them to his rooms on the main campus of the Soltryce Academy. There they were to be met by a small group of people hired to make the three of them look their best.

It had been a long time since any of them had been in Rexxentrum without direct supervision. Trent had eyes everywhere so they were not entirely without oversight, but it was easy to maintain the illusion that the three of them were completely alone. For a moment Caleb felt like a child again, riding from his hometown with two relative strangers, off to greater things.

“We’ve come so far,” Astrid said with a smile, when Caleb voiced this thought.

“We’re certainly dressed better now,” Eodwulf said, and Caleb rolled his eyes.

It wasn’t nearly so far a ride as the trip from Blumenthal, however, and it wasn’t long before the carriage came to the main gates of the Soltryce Academy and they were making their way through the now-familiar campus.

The travel through the school was odd. Nothing about the academy itself had changed, but it felt as though Caleb was seeing it with new eyes. The symbols carved into the walls held more meaning now, the colors of the banners rich with arcane significance. He also could quickly identify every entrance and exit in each hall they walked through, as well as the shadowed spots that would become dangerous if the situation were to turn.

But it didn’t, and they weren’t accosted by anyone on the walk to the faculty residences, although the long stares from the other students were obvious. Perhaps they looked now like upperclassmen had looked to him all those years ago; mysterious and powerful, minds turned towards the arcane and no longer shackled on the petty material plane. A part of his pride preened at the thought, and he stood even straighter as they walked to the faculty apartments.

Trent’s quarters at the school were only superficially lived in. There was no dust on anything, but only a few things bore signs of visible use. It was easy enough to clear the center of the room and array the outfits, making it seem more like they were in an oddly decorated shop rather than their master’s living space.

Despite the sheer number of garments, there was very little actual choice given to the three of them beyond the color of the clothes they wore. Astrid chose a burgundy gown, Eodwulf a navy suit, and Caleb chose a charcoal-grey suit for himself.  The fitting was quick, almost brusque, adornments had already been selected to match the clothes, and very quickly they were being shuffled off to the hairdressers. The entire experience took a little under an hour and quickly enough they were at loose ends, waiting in the courtyard for the carriage to return.

Eodwulf sat down gingerly on one of the stone benches, pulling Caleb and Astrid to sit beside him.  

“Do you think we’ll have the graduation ceremony here?” He asked, looping an arm around each of their waists.

“I hope so,” Caleb replied. “it would be nice to come back, if only for a bit.”

“Show our parents around,” Astrid added. “I’d like to show mama the library.”

“Yes, and I think father would like to see the hall of artifacts,” Caleb said.

“Draw us up a map, liebling, so we can get planning,” Eodwulf said, patting Caleb’s knee, the excitement clear in his voice. “We’ll give them a proper tour.”

The carriage trundled up to them after waiting a bit longer, and they climbed inside for the ride back to Trent’s home. They talked more about their plans for graduation, but nothing about what they’d be doing after. That still felt too far away.

/\/\/\

The day of the ball dawned like any other, although there was an unmistakable tension in the air.

It was “Master Ikithon” in public, which was easy enough to remember. The coachman from the city addressed him as such when the carriage arrived to take the four of them to the ball. They rode in silence for the most part, with Trent occasionally filling them in on the important guests, and who to keep an eye on.

“I expect a full report tomorrow morning,” Trent finished, as the carriage was slowing in the mansion courtyard. “And know that I will be listening to everything that is said about you, as well.”

With that, they made their way inside. Their host was a member of the royal court, and their home was every inch as palatial as such a station would imply. Anything that wasn’t richly painted was gilded, and anything that wasn’t gilded was draped in silks and velvets.

There was still a substantial part of him that worried about sticking out. They were no more than fifty miles from the Zemni Fields, but this house felt like another plane entirely. Amidst all this opulence he felt every inch the poor soldier’s son. He kept his hands at his sides, but felt the quick brush of Eodwulf’s fingers as they walked. At least he wasn’t the only one feeling out of place.

Two massive doors swung inwards to the ballroom, and a servants voice called out their names, announcing Master Ikithon’s presence to the assembled guests.

“Behave,” he said, quiet enough that only the three of them could hear. And with that he was off, gliding into the crowd to conduct whatever business was necessary.

“Well, shall we?” Astrid asked, snaking one hand into Eodwulf’s elbow, and the other into Caleb’s. “I figure we can spend the first bit together, get to know the situation.”

And so they went, following Astrid’s lead and mingling with the crowd as a unit. Introductions moved at a rapid pace. The names and faces ran together, testing even Caleb’s memory.

“So exciting to meet the three of you,” said a general.

“We’ve been wondering when we’d see Ikithon’s protégés,” said an Abjurist from the palace.

“It’s such a treat to have you,” said their hostess, “Have you had the chance to enjoy the dancing?”

This they took as a tacit cue to spread out across the floor. With a quick squeeze to Caleb’s hand, Eodwulf took their hostess for a turn across the floor. With that, he nodded at Astrid and the two of them split up.

He thought of it like their mission in Zadash-divide and conquer.

It was surprisingly easy to mingle with the crowd; the guests were more concerned with themselves, and preening over their station, than interrogating Caleb. Apparently Trent taking on private students was little more than an idle curiosity among the high society of Rexxentrum. There were a few folk from the Cerberus Assembly who were more intrigued, but no one asked any especially deep questions. He took a few lords and ladies to the dance floor; he didn’t make a fool of himself and they seemed to have a good time, so he considered that a major win.

For his own part, Caleb learned a lot about the inner workings of this corner of the Empire. He learned all manner of gossip about who was having affairs with whom, who was falling out of favor with the king, who was a rising star. Nor was it difficult to read between the lines and see people’s sympathies, and the larger game that they were playing.

Having made the rounds, he was wondering what to do next when he spotted Astrid in conversation with the son of a lord from Kamordah. It wasn’t going well. He could see the sharpness in her expression, the slow ebb of her mood as her conversation partner amused her less and less. She would never step so far as to offend him, he knew that, but they were supposed to be on their best behavior, and Trent wouldn’t look kindly on even the slightest frown.

Caleb picked his way through the crowd, keeping his ear open to the chatter around him. The three of them had made something of a splash, what with this being their first time among society since Trent had taken them on as protégés. For all that people weren’t terribly interested in the details of their existence, any new blood in society was cause for gossip. People were discussing alliances already, how best to leverage the potential to get an in with the Assembly at the ground level. He could feel the trailing gazes on his back as he walked over to Astrid, but tried not to let it show.

Easily enough, he got over to the pair of them, standing behind the young lord. He waited for the band to finish their song before interrupting. Leaning around him, he held his hand out to her. Her eyes met his and she perked up a bit, knowing exactly what he was doing.

“Miss Astrid, may I have this dance?”

“You certainly may,” she replied, taking his hand.  Turning to her conversation partner, she smiled politely. “Please excuse me.” He nodded, a bit wrong-footed by the sudden change but seemingly not upset. Perhaps merely dismayed that he’d been beaten to the punch.

Caleb led her away onto the polished floor, through throngs of the elegant and idle rich.

“I hope I wasn’t taking you from anything important,” he said under his breath, once sure they were out of earshot.

Astrid rolled her eyes. “That obvious, was I?”

“Not to him, no. But to myself, or Eodwulf-“ He nodded over to where their companion was. “We know you a bit better than that.”

A ways away, Eodwulf was entertaining a small cluster of younger nobility, socialites who were clearly entranced by mages, especially ones as handsome as him.

“You’ll get your chance,” Astrid said, noting where his gaze had caught as they walked over to the floor. “He knows you’re saving the last dance for him.”

Caleb hummed absently, not sure what else to say. She was right, of course. It wasn’t as though he felt any sort of worry over Eodwulf straying or finding someone new, but there was a small, quiet part of him that rankled at the sight. But that was not a train of thought he wanted to stay on, and he could deflect as well as her.

“Speaking of last dance, I feel like there might be a few duels on the horizon over who gets yours. I have heard several young lords and ladies speaking quite admiringly of you.”

Astrid had a facility for dance that was entrancing. Caleb knew all the steps, and could keep time impeccably, but Astrid understood how too embellish it. He could never figure out the formula- when to add in spins, or change things up, but she could weave it all together as easy as breathing. Watching her, it seemed less like she was the one being led, and more like her partners were following her in a daze.

“That would please Master Ikithon, I’m sure,” she said noncommittally, not quite meeting his gaze as they bowed to each other. Well, it seemed they were both avoiding things tonight.

“Don’t make me look too bad,” he murmured, setting his hand on her waist as the band struck up a new tune.

“I won’t, my dear Caleb. On the contrary, in fact, I plan on getting your best foot forward.”

“So droll,” he replied, feeling the tension start to slip away. Astrid smiled, thin as a crescent moon and just as bright.

They turned across the floor, each of them scanning the room as they went. Paradoxically, there was less scrutiny on them here in the center of things than on the fringes amongst the crowd. In the same vein, it was easy for them to converse as well. Astrid leaning in to whisper in his ear was seen as nothing more than coy flirtation.

“Omit Hass is with Master Ikithon,” Astrid murmured.

“The envoy from the King is heading over to speak with them both,” Caleb added, noting the bright gold braid on the man’s cuffs.

Astrid leaned back and Caleb went with her, dipping her so she could get an easier look.

“He seems pleased,” She said when he pulled her back up.

As much as Caleb valued their education, he found himself now longing for graduation. It was all he could want, to be out in the world with Astrid and Eodwulf - his best friend and his dearest love – working to make the Empire a better place and keeping the law. He imagined many balls like this, gathering information and intelligence, then turning loose on the cities and seeking the same among the citizens.

The song ended, and Astrid smiled as Caleb kissed the back of her hand and led her off the floor.

“I think we can sneak a minute or two,” Astrid said, pitching her voice low enough so their neighbors couldn’t hear.

“Quite a gathering,” Caleb said, plucking a pair of glasses from the tray of a passing waiter with a nod of thanks. “It’s hard to believe such things are common occurrences.”

“I’ve met so many marvelous people,” Astrid replied.

The talk was banal, pleasant trivialities that would flatter their host and not raise suspicion. The real conversation was in the quick gestures and subtle quirks of tone.

‘I don’t trust any of this,’ Caleb spelled in a raised eyebrow.

‘At least we know who we’re dealing with now,’ Astrid tapped against her glass.

‘They’re going to try to use us.’

‘Let them.’

Caleb hid a smile behind his glass as best he could, trying to play it off like Astrid had said something especially witty. With that, the moment was up, and they both turned to disperse into the crowd. An elderly merchant couple walked past him, and Caleb caught their eye with a smile. Back to the dance.

Eventually, the night began to wind down and it was time for the last few dances. Caleb’s conversation group all dispersed to find partners for the floor, and he just barely managed to dodge a couple requests from young socialites and find his way over to Eodwulf.

It was much the same situation that he found Astrid in; Eodwulf was chatting to some child of a noble, and he was clearly interested in him. Unlike with Astrid, Caleb felt a flare of possessive frustration at the sight.

“Excuse me, if I might cut in,” he said, keeping his smile smooth and turning to Eodwulf.

“I thought you’d never get here,” Eodwulf said, turning to let Caleb into the circle. “Is it time?”

“It is indeed,” Caleb answered, holding his hand out. “May I have this final dance?”

Eodwulf’s smile didn’t so much soften as it deepened, filling his eyes with warmth. “You certainly may,” he said, taking Caleb’s hand.

“Forgive me,” Caleb said, to the other person – Kieran, he believed was his name – that Eodwulf had been speaking to. He seemed dismayed, and while Caleb wanted his hands decidedly far from Eodwulf it wouldn’t do to leave him unhappy. “If we had more time I wouldn’t leave you in the lurch like this. I’ll owe you a dance for next time, alright? Don’t let me forget.”

He capped it off with a wink, and Kieran flushed, seemingly surprised by the sudden turn of events.

“Oh-okay, sure,” He stuttered. “Sounds like a plan.”

Caleb gave Eodwulf a gentle spin as they settled on the dance floor, much fuller now that it was the end of the night; most of the guests had come out for one last dance. They had to stand much closer, which wasn’t a hardship for either of them.

“A little short on space,” Caleb muttered.

“Oh no, whatever shall we do?” Eodwulf teased, matching Caleb’s posture and slipping his hand to the small of Caleb’s back.

“Feeling a bit bold, are we?” Caleb asked, as Eodwulf’s hand settled. Eodwulf immediately flushed a lovely pink, and it took a great deal of effort to not take Eodwulf’s face in his hands and kiss him right there on the dance floor. As it was, he smiled broadly, moving his hand to keep Eodwulf’s in place.

“Leave it,” he said. It was hardly traditional, but they weren’t the only ones on the floor in such a posture. A lack of space, a long night, and good drink meant that most of the couples were holding closer than would have been considered acceptable. For the first time, the air felt relaxed, like everyone was dancing because they wanted to, not because they were socially obliged.

He pulled Eodwulf even closer and stepped into a slow foxtrot. It was calm, and as close to romantic as they had ever been able to get. There had been a couple practice dances, foxtrots and waltzes in the bedroom where they held each other even closer, but there was a unique magic to these surroundings. The opulence and excess finally seemed to fit, and Caleb understood why these balls were held with such frequency.

Eodwulf rested his head on Caleb’s shoulder, and Caleb’s breath caught; it was the biggest gesture of public affection they’d ever dared take. He let himself take a breath and press Eodwulf against him, enjoy the sweetness for the moments it lasted; the crowd was so dense they were likely difficult to pick out, but there was the ever-present murmur in the back of his head that they were under Trent’s eye. That same murmur was in Eodwulf’s head as well, and slowly his head rose to scan around the room and take stock of their situation.

“I wonder if Astrid chose someone to dance with,” Eodwulf said.

“I don’t see her on the floor,” Caleb said, casting his gaze among the dancers.

“Master Ikithon is with Astrid,” Eodwulf whispered in his ear. “They’re not dancing.”

As they spun, Caleb searched the fringes of the floor for them. He was admittedly quite worried that Trent would take exception to Astrid sitting this dance out; however he seemed genuinely calm about the situation and was conversing with her. Presumably catching up on everything that had happened over the evening, but it was impossible to be sure. Fortunately, it didn’t look like she was in trouble. Nor, for that matter, were they.

That question settled, Caleb relaxed back into the dance. He and Eodwulf both nodded at acquaintances they’d made throughout the night, but truly their eyes were only for each other.

Unfortunately the song couldn’t last forever, and eventually the band wound down and all the dancers stopped. As they all clapped for the musicians who had played tirelessly all night, Caleb murmured to Eodwulf.

“One day we’ll dance like this and there will be no mission. Only you and I.”

“I believe that day will come sooner than you think,” Eodwulf replied with a smile.

With the last song finished, it was time to leave. Trent was keen for them to go before the crowd truly dispersed, and called them to him with a sharp gesture. They thanked their host graciously, and followed Trent out the door. The four of them walked across the courtyard to the carriage in silence, waiting for the verdict on the night.

With a portentous pause as the driver hopped down from the seat and opened the door, Trent turned to them and spoke.

“Well done,” he said. Caleb tried not to grin at what was very high praise, coming from their teacher. “You seem to have acquitted yourself well tonight. I’m very pleased.”

“Thank you, sir,” the three of them chorused in unison.

They climbed into the carriage after him, sitting across from him on the same small bench seat. Closing the door, they rolled over the cobbled yard and onto the smooth street before he spoke again.

“Now,” he said, “tell me what you have learned.”

/\/\/\

The ride back was long, but full. The three of them expounded on everyone they had met; their occupations, relative rank, the details of their lives and apparent sympathies. Trent listened attentively, asking occasional questions about particular details, but for the most part sat in silence and let them speak. They had taken care to spread out through the crowd to cover as many people as possible, and Caleb could see that Trent was pleased at the lack of overlap in their information.

At last when they were done, he nodded, seemingly content.

“Quite a comprehensive read of the room,” he said. “What do you think they make of you?”

Questions like these were the hardest, and the most dangerous to get wrong.

“They seem less concerned with why we were there, and more interested in what we could do for them,” Caleb dared. “I heard several people speaking of being able to influence the Cerberus Assembly. We are little more than tools to them.”

“They asked very few questions about us,” Astrid contributed. “They seem to think us ignorant of politics.”

“Only members of the Assembly were interested in what we were capable of, as they were familiar with your skills,” Eodwulf said. “It seemed an intellectual curiosity more than anything.”

Again, Trent nodded, digesting the information but offering no clue as to his thoughts. They rode in silence for the last few minutes, and he only spoke when they finally stopped.

“Your graduation is nearly upon you,” Trent said as they departed the carriage, making their way back to the house. “I know you will not fail me.”

Caleb knew it too. He worried once, about what they were doing. There was no doubt in his mind now, not anymore.

[djinn-and-djuice]

(Hello! I’m back, this time with a fic about the twins. Back when I watched the conclave arc for the first time, I was struck by the fact that Allura seemed to have seen the destruction of Byroden firsthand. So I wondered if maybe her path might have crossed with the twins, way back when. This idea has been rattling around in my head for at least a year and a half now, I hope you all enjoy it!) (also on ao3)

[set during the chroma conclave arc of campaign one. if that counts as a spoiler.]

~*~

wait for the wheel

~*~

The ashes of Byroden have cooled by the time they get there, and few people have answers. The local reeve can’t even give them an estimate for how many people were slain, beyond “most of them”. All that remains of this humble little town are ash and charred timbers, scattered with blackened bones.

Distantly, Allura can hear weeping. She watches Kima talk to the few survivors, people who were out of town when Thordak descended upon it.

“We have to be better than this,” she mutters to Drake, feeling anger burn hot in her chest. Her grip on her staff becomes white-knuckled as she surveys the wreckage of these people’s lives. They have done nothing but fail, time and again, always arriving in time to find another destroyed village and a trail gone nearly cold.

Drake is busy scratching scrying runes into the blackened earth so he doesn’t look over to her, but he says, quietly enough that it could be offhand, “we’re close.”

“How many more times, Drake? How many more times are other people going to suffer for our failings?”

He doesn’t answer, either because he’s feeling as beaten-down and frustrated as she is, or because his senses have left his body to track their quarry down. She sits down heavily on what was once the foundation of the tavern. She feels bits of charcoal crush underneath her, pressing grime into the fabric of her dress.

In the back of her mind she can hear her teachers chiding her, telling her to stay focused and not let her emotions get the better of her. If she cannot focus, she cannot cast. If she cannot cast, she cannot help.

Slowly, she pulls her frayed nerves together and takes a breath. She looks up and steps away from Drake to look at what remains.

A couple of hunched figures are picking through the rubble of a house on the edge of town, and a handful of people are standing in a tight huddle occasionally pointing at different buildings, apparently planning what the next steps for this village are.

“South.”

Drake’s voice pulls her out of her reverie. His scrying is done, and she looks over to him.

“We need to head south to catch up with him.”

Kima catches Allura’s eye, and she waves her back to them. A few minutes plotting their route over the map, and then they’re off again. They’re almost out of the town’s boundary when-

"Please, wait!" A voice calls out behind the group. Allura turns to see two people standing behind them.

They're obviously brother and sister, twins with dark hair, and dark eyes, and tear tracks cutting identical lines down their faces. They wear worn and patched road clothes that have been almost irreparably stained with ash. They're children, or close enough.

"Please," the brother says, reaching a hand out to them. "No one will tell us what happened."

And Kima, for all her gruff nature and occasionally abrasive sense of righteousness, is the one to reach out, to sling her maul over her back and hold out her hands to the two of them. She has always known how to do this, how to reach out to people and connect to them when they’re hurting, and it has nothing to do with the gleaming holy symbol around her neck.

“I’m so sorry,” she says, “There was a dragon.”

The brother gasps, the sound almost a sob, as he clings to his sister with one hand and Kima’s hand with the other.

The sister grips her brother tightly, and Allura can see her hands shake as she speaks, reaching for Kima to complete the circle. “What kind of dragon?”

“A red one.” Kima pauses, reconsiders. “An ancient red one.”

Usually that’s where they lose people-most folk know that chromatic dragons are destructive and violent, but the subtleties of colors and ages are less common knowledge. But the twins just nod, and either they understand the enormity of what that means or they’re just pretending to.

“And you’re going to kill it.” The brother looks at each of them, and seems to see something that makes him nod without waiting for an actual answer.

Oh gods, that is the hope. There is such confidence in their faces and Allura wonders where it is coming from.

“Let us help you,” the sister says. They’re both armed, her with a bow and quiver and him with a handful of daggers on his belt.

She can recognize their half-elven features, and knows that children of such a heritage tend to age slowly, so the pair of them are likely older than they look. But still, they look far too young to be out on their own, much less offering to hunt a dragon in a grief-stricken quest for revenge.

“Don’t you have somewhere you can go?” Drake asks them, and Allura hates that she can guess their answer so easily.

“No,” the brother says.

“This was the only place for us to go,” the sister continues.

“We’ve been traveling on our own for a while now.” They talk in tandem, going back and forth seamlessly.

Allura knows a Syngornian accent when she hears it, and the dissonance of hearing such a rigidly cultured pronunciation come from these dirty, tired siblings is jarring. The more she looks at them, the more she can see the marks of hunger and hard times written across their faces and forms.

Twin half-elves with wealthy accents and no family. At least, no family they can claim. No one in this town would tell them anything either, and now they are being passed on once again.

Allura feels a deep, puncturing sorrow at their situation, but she will not let children follow them into danger for the sake of giving them somewhere to go

“I’m sorry,” she says, “But we can’t take you with us. I’ve no doubt you can look after yourselves, but this isn’t about that. This dragon is a threat like nothing we’ve ever seen.”

She straightens her spine and steps closer to them, holding out her hand.

“But I promise you, we will stop this beast. This will not happen again.”

She can feel Kima’s sharp stare at her back as she says it, as she holds out her hand to shake. Kima is many things, but she is also a paladin of Bahamut, and holds the sanctity of her word higher than her life. Once they’re out of the twins’ earshot Allura is going to get an earful about making promises she can’t keep.

But that’s the crux of it. She wants to keep it, desperately.

The brother takes Kima’s hand first, and shakes it. Allura can see his jaw working, like he wants to say something else but can’t quite bring himself to. Or maybe he’s trying to hold back.

His sister takes Kima’s hand next, and her eyes are already hardened with resolve.

“Well, we won’t keep you,” she says. “Thank you for your honesty.”

“Hopefully our paths will cross again,” Allura says.

“Once the dragon is dead,” the brother says, the faintest smile on his face.

“Indeed,” she agrees, and they take their leave.

It is easier, somehow, to keep going. Having someone who believes they can win is such a small thing, but one with considerable power. As they walk away from Byroden, Allura knows, although she doesn’t know where this knowledge comes from, that they can win this fight. It warms her.

“You mean that.” Kima says to her, once they’re out of earshot. It’s not a question.

“I do,” she replies.

“Good.”

“The next time we see Thordak,” Allura says, “It will be the last time.”

“From your lips to the gods’ ears,” Drake says, a smile on his face for the first time in weeks.

And off they go, to hunt the dragon. To make the sacrifices mean something.

 ////\\\\////\\\\////\\\\

 As it turns out, the gods aren’t too keen on listening. Allura is lucky to be alive, and as she takes stock of the scattered refugees that Vox Machina managed to pull from the wreckage of Emon she wonders how many people she knows weren’t so lucky. She thinks of Shaun Gilmore, hanging on by a thread in one of the castle bedrooms, and decides to count her blessings where she can.

Thordak escaped. Gods have mercy, Thordak escaped. That sort of magic-- Allura can’t begin to fathom how it was done, let alone by whom.

So she goes to talk to Vox Machina, because even though they are bloody and beaten they refuse to break, and they went back into the city to rescue more people, and they are Tal’Dorei’s best hope. She has to tell them everything she knows.

What she does not expect is for any of Vox Machina to have as personal connection to this dragon as she does.

In her defense, it has been a very long time. And Vex and Vax are no longer the scared, dirty children she met all those years ago. Regular meals, several haircuts, and new armor –to say nothing of the bear that follows Vex’ahlia around- go a long way to making it hard to recognize someone. On top of it all, Allura’s nerves are more than a little frayed.

She barely remembers that meeting, when she tells Vox Machina of her previous experiences with Thordak. But as soon as she describes the sight of Byroden left in ashes, the look of blank shock on the twins’ faces is like gazing directly into the past.

Allura has come to know the twins as strong, vibrant, and caring people; to overlay that familiarity over the lonely, hurting children that she, Kima, and Drake met all those years ago nearly gives her vertigo.

She doesn’t know if they’re having the same sort of realization that she is; more likely they’re reeling over the fact that the dragon that destroyed their first home has now destroyed their second.

She takes a breath, and tucks the revelation away to deal with later. When the meeting is over, she’ll find a quiet spot and figure out what to say to them.

How to apologize for breaking her promise.

+++

It is Vax who finds her first. On one of the parapets of Whitestone castle, where she’s looking out over the city and trying to figure out what the hell to do next. He’s silent as always, but has the good grace to not actually sneak up on her.

“Been a while,” he says, leaning against the wall. She laughs; it’s little more than a forceful sigh, but it’s the closest she’s come in the past few days so it counts. He says it with such an easy tone that it wouldn’t have been out of place as idle pleasantries at a dinner party; she doesn’t know how he manages it.

“I’m sorry we didn’t recognize you sooner,” he says. There’s a wan smile on his face, and dark bags under his eyes.

“To be fair, I didn’t recognize you either.”

“It’s strange to think how we’ve all come together again. You think Kima will remember us?”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it, once you remind her. You’ve both changed quite a bit.”

“We’ve all changed.” Vax pauses, like he wants to say something. Whatever it is, he keeps it to himself. He looks at his hands, and her eyes follow- he still has blood and soot under his nails, in the deepest creases of his palms.

The silence stretches between them. Distantly, she can see the city of Whitestone, and wonders where the refugees will be settled.

“I suppose we have,” she says, for lack of anything else. She doesn’t feel different; she feels just as rudderless now as she felt all those years ago.

Best to get this over with. “I’m sorry.”

Vax turns to face her, one elbow on the railing and confusion on his face. “What for?”

“I promised you that we would get rid of Thordak.” The confusion doesn’t fade from his face.

“Allura, there is nothing to forgive,” he says. She gives him a flat look, but he persists. “I’m serious. You did everything in your power to rid this plane of Thordak, and you succeeded. If you had killed him instead, and someone resurrected him, would you still feel the need to apologize?”

Not waiting for an answer, he goes on. “I appreciate the sentiment, but it’s not your fault.” He reaches out and puts a hand on her shoulder. “You kept your promise. You couldn’t kill him, but you made sure he wouldn’t hurt anyone else. You got rid of him.”

She doesn’t say anything, and Vax’s mouth twists at her lack of response but he doesn’t call her on it.

“You did keep the promise that we would meet again, too,” he says, smiling.

“I suppose I did.” That, at least, brings some comfort.

“It feels like fate, a little bit. Like we’re meant to be doing things this way.”

“I didn’t take you for someone who put a lot of stock in fate.”

Vax hums noncommittally, and thinks for a moment. “I wouldn’t say that I am, but there has to be something to the fact that our paths didn’t split forever after Byroden. It’s hard to explain, but this feels right.”

And as he says that, she starts to believe him, just a bit. There is a truth to his words, and suddenly things don’t seem quite so hopeless as before.

+++

Vex is both easier and harder to find than her brother. Vox Machina is only going to be in Whitestone for a couple of days, but she has busied herself with the workings of the city. She’s always in the middle of a crowd; which makes her simple to locate, but difficult to talk to.

Opportunity comes in the late afternoon, when she spots Vex sitting at the base of the Sun Tree. Trinket is sunning himself in the fading light, and several of the refugee children are napping against him. Allura takes a seat next to her and watches the gentle scene.

“You know,” Vex says after a minute, breaking the silence, “I was angry that we couldn’t go with you. I wanted to avenge our mother and destroy that beast.”

Straight to the point. Allura is grateful, since that saves her the awkward run-up.

“I studied. Tirelessly. I learned everything I could about dragons, so I could kill them.”

“It seems to have served you well so far,” Allura says mildly. Both of them remember the late General, and his swift end.

“It has.” Her smile is sharp. “And it will when we kill Thordak as well, and the rest of his cronies.”

“You’re not angry?”

Vex shakes her head, a small smile on her face. “No, darling. Vax told me you came and spoke to him, and I agree with him. And I’m about to say the same things to you. You kept your promise. You removed Thordak from this plane, and bound him forever to the plane of fire. No one else was hurt.”

“He broke out-“

“How?”

“I don’t know, it should have been impossible.”

“And that’s what I’m talking about,” she exclaims, like Allura has made some massive breakthrough. “Allura, you’re one of the finest arcane minds in Tal’Dorei. If you couldn’t think of a way for him to get out, then that means we’re dealing with some serious, world-ending shit here. There was no way you could have predicted this.”

“Besides,” Vex says, bumping her shoulder into Allura’s companionably. “This just gives us a chance to kill him now.”

“That’s quite a silver lining to take from all this,” Allura is a little thrown by both of the twins’ easy acceptance. Could it really be that simple?

“Have to find them somewhere, I suppose,” she shrugs, smile softening to something much less bloodthirsty. “We’re alive, we know who we’re facing, we have a safe place to sleep, and we reunited with you. Well, maybe reunited isn’t the right word, but you know what I mean.”

She looks at Allura, and back out to where the parents are collecting their napping children. A couple of them wave to her and Vex, who nods back.

“We would have been killed, had we gone with you then,” she says. “We probably would have gotten you killed as well. But now, we have the rest of Vox Machina, some decent experience with dragons, and your wide breadth of knowledge. I know that this time we’ll be the ones coming out on top.”

And you know what? Allura believes her.

[djinn-and-djuice]

Here is the fourth and final of the Widofjord set! They’ll be up on ao3 soonish, I’ll post a link then. :)

The age old classic, the Boyfriend Shirt, Widofjord of course, as a prompt

Thank you nonny, Boyfriend Shirt is *chef’s kiss* and I cannot get enough of it. This ended up being the longest of the bunch, so let’s just get into it. :)

Keep reading

[djinn-and-djuice]

Widofjord fic 3/4!

Widofjord + hand holding for a prompt? Like super shy, probably near the beginning of the relationship sort. Hope you feel better!

Thank you! I’m feeling much better, all things considered. <3

I wrote this fic three whole times, because the first time was wicked angsty, the second rambled and got way off-topic, and this one, while very short, is the best distillation of what I wanted to get at. I might take another whack at it later, but you’ve been so nice waiting for so long I couldn’t bear to make you wait any longer.

Keep reading

[djinn-and-djuice]

Widofjord prompt 2 of 4! :D

Writing prompt; Fjord and Caleb respectively keeping an eye out for and gathering spell components for each other with no prompting, the group knows they're doing and just wait to see the exchange happen knowing it'll be awkwardly adorable. The exchange happens while everyone is asleep and Yasha is the only one who sees it.

Here you go!

Y’all ever looked at some of those material spellcomponents? They’re weird. Of course, all of the components for Fjord’s spells are things you can’t justfind in the woods, so I had to tweakit a bit. Also, fun fact: sailors - particularly merchant sailors like Fjord -  were really good at handicrafts! Macrameand knot tying are no-brainers, obviously, but sailors were also generally goodat sewing to repair their clothes, as well as carving/engraving for crafts likescrimshaw!

Keep reading

[djinn-and-djuice]

I got a set of 4 Widofjord prompts on my main blog, here’s the first!

Widofjord prompt, if you feel like it: Snuggling with all the blankets off the beds in front of the fire because Caleb wouldn't put down his new book and they're too far North for him to actually be comfortable. Just fluff and arcane texts.

Thank you for your patience, and the lovely prompt! At long last, here is the fill for this.I am a real big fan of blanket cuddles, and Caleb, being from the frozen north, probably is as well. I really had to chop this down otherwise it would have ballooned out of control and I’d probably still be writing it ^^;(these prompts will also be posted on ao3, once they’re all up here)

Keep reading

[djinn-and-djuice]

lo for I have risen from the grave! life has been interesting and challenging as of late, but I’ll spare you the spiel. episode 26 broke my heart, and episode 27 made me cry, and I have little else to say aside from “beau is fun to write”. i am exhausted but i hope you like this fic.(also on ao3)

[contains spoilers for episodes 26 and 27 of campaign two, and alludes heavily to spoilers for the endgame of campaign 1]

vespers

~*~

It's a long walk back to The Landlocked Lady, but there are still things to be done in the wake of that thoroughly upsetting recon mission. Champ, that creep, is working the desk when they get back but thankfully keeps his comments to himself when they pay for two rooms but all file into one.

Keg is sketching out vague blueprints of the Sour Nest with Nila's help, Caleb is still recovering from talking for ten whole minutes back at the Estate Sybaritic, and Nott is naturally glued to his side while he flips vacantly through his spellbook. Aside from the occasional whispers, none of them speak. Beau, meanwhile, can barely focus on anything. The room, already cramped with the five of them packed into it, feels almost claustrophobically small. Every sound, from Keg’s whispering to the scratching of quill against paper, feels like it’s being carved into her eardrums with a chisel. So with as little movement as possible Beau stands, throws her cloak over one arm, and steps out of the room. A quick glance over her shoulder shows her that Nott is the only one to notice her departure. She watches Beau walk out, but doesn't acknowledge her with anything more than a barely-there nod of the head.

It's probably shitty of her, to be walking off alone after everything that's happened and while there’s still so much to do, but if she doesn’t get a breath of fresh air and thirty seconds of silence she is going to crawl out of her fucking skin. Hopefully the obvious presence of her pack left behind conveys that this is just a stroll; that she’ll be careful, that she fully intends to come back.

Like intent means anything these days.

She sniffs, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her cloak as she puts it on in the foyer. The cold weather has been vicious on her sinuses, used as she is to the southern climes of Kamordah and Zadash. Or at least, that's what she tells herself to keep her face stern as she walks through Shady Creek.

This place is an absolute disaster, and Beau has seen some terrible shithole towns and some seedy goddamn underbellies. There’s more than a few people passed out or straight-up dead in the gutter, garbage and food refuse is scattered everywhere, and the whole place smells vaguely of blood and dry rot. It does very little to alleviate her mood, and briefly she wonders if she’s going to feel like this - discontented, like she pulled a muscle in her soul - forever, if this is just her life now. No. That’s bullshit. She’s been through hell before and come out swinging; she can do it again this time. She doesn’t know when she’s gonna come out the other side, but she will. At least she’s not alone this go-round.

She walks a few blocks, but the sights don’t get any less depressing or disheartening. She doesn’t feel quite as penned-in as before, but now that her head is clearer the jagged, rusty edges of the town loom even sharper. With every step she’s further and further convinced that this little walk was a mistake, but something keeps her putting one foot in front of the other. It feels less like she’s running away and more like she’s walking towards something, which makes no fucking sense but feeling like she has some sort of goal is leagues better and she’ll chase that feeling anywhere.

Eventually her feet lead her to a small stone building, set apart from the others. It’s somewhere between a shed and hut in size, made of brick in places and large unworked stones in others, painted a uniform grey. Despite how ramshackle it is, it doesn’t carry the same air that the rest of the buildings in town do. There’s something about it that makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

One step closer becomes two, becomes five, and she sees the metal raven skull set into the door, the bundles of dried flowers set at the doorstep and that feeling suddenly makes sense. This is a temple. The Matron of Ravens is an interesting choice to have in the middle of town, but not necessarily odd.

It takes her a second, however, to realize it's not a temple to the Matron of Ravens. Painted copper coins have been nailed around the doorframe, which Beau only notices when she gets closer, showing that this small building is dedicated to her Champion instead. The coins are precisely spaced, and not a single one is missing, surprisingly. Huh. Apparently there are some things in Shady Creek that are sacred. Or maybe it’s fear of divine reprisal, but either works. Still, that’s a motif that people only use when praying to him, rather than his queen.

Beau knows the folktales, and her connections with the Cobalt Soul means she knows which ones are true. She's heard all about the Champion of the Lost, the guardian of souls, the knight who sits at the Matron’s right hand. While she holds total dominion over death, it is his charge to see the souls of the deceased safely to her embrace. He comforts the recently dead, and prevents them from becoming restless, haunted spirits. Beyond that the information is fuzzy, protected by the higher echelons of the order. She knows how he used to be a mortal servant of the Lady of Fates a couple decades ago, but that’s about it. She doesn’t know when people started worshipping him or why, but there seems to be some substance to it, at least. If nothing answered the prayers, people probably wouldn’t pray anymore. Given who he serves, worship of him isn’t prohibited in the Empire, per se, but it’s not exactly the safest of propositions to have a temple exclusively dedicated to him like this one.

It makes sense, in a weird sort of way. Town like this, there’s probably a lot of people who want to make sure their souls aren’t left to wander.

Pushing the door open to the tinkling of chimes, Beau pokes her head in. There’s no one else in the space, so she steps in and shuts the door behind her. The temple is clean, with a couple of low benches and a small, if well appointed, altar. While there isn’t a whole lot of ambient light to come in through the windows in the first place, what does come through is filtered by gauzy curtains, creating a sense of dusk.

The temple smells of dry stone, smoke, and lavender. Off against the wall she can see a black iron censer and the low glow of the coals inside it. It’s such a small thing, but that gentle herbal scent reminds her so profoundly of Molly that she cracks for the second time in three days, stumbling before the small altar and falling to her knees to cry. The slender statue of a half-elven man with great black wings looks quietly down as the pain bleeds out of her.

Was he there, when Molly passed? The stories said he could fly faster than thought, was he quick enough that Molly didn’t wake up somewhere alone again?

She’s not exactly sure how much time passes, but it’s not too long before her tears have run their course and she pulls herself up to sit heavily on the bench nearest the altar.

“Listen up, you asshole,” she says, pointing an indignant finger at the statue. The figure of the Champion is carved from stone and painted with an almost loving amount of detail. “You look after him, alright? We’re gonna do our damndest to get him back, but you make sure to keep him company for now. He’s obnoxious, but he’s one of the good ones. One of the few really good ones.”

Praying has never been one of her strong suits-she’d never really needed it before the monastery, and the Cobalt Soul was more interested in serving Ioun in deeds than venerating her at all hours.  Maybe calling him an asshole wasn’t the greatest idea, but it’s all she has. The statue is smiling-smirking, more like-so he’s probably the sort of entity to take that kind of talk in stride.

She sets her face in her hands, sighing. “Tell him we miss him,” she says, voice muffled.

There’s no one else in the temple-she checked when she walked in, and the chimes hung from the door have stayed silent, but she feels someone sit down beside her and put an arm over her shoulders. She catches a waft of that rich incense Molly was so fond of, and hears, behind her, the faint sound of creaking leather armor.

The feeling is gone as quickly as it comes, and Beau lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. Suddenly the small temple feels barren and unwelcoming. She’s had her moment of quiet, and now the thought of that cramped room is an appealing one. She doesn’t want to be alone now.

She takes some of her last pocket bacon and sets them in the offering dish at the foot of the statue for the Champion. The dead don’t need food, and the gods need it even less, but it feels right.

“Thanks,” she says, and stalls at the door for a moment or so, unsure if there’s anything she’s supposed to be doing, before simply walking away.

She makes her way back through the streets of Shady Creek Run with a keen eye on her surroundings. The only thing she misses is the large black bird that flies behind her, keeping watch the whole way.

[djinn-and-djuice]

holyhalla replied to your post: “[you all have @cobaltpilot to thank for this! I was looking for...”:

I love this so mucchhhh YESS BONDING FIC

Your fics are always a treat ����                    

hey did you know you’re the best? TToTT

[djinn-and-djuice]

[you all have @cobaltpilot to thank for this! I was looking for something to write and he prompted me with “Molly and Nott bonding over drinks, for different reasons”. this fic is for you, man! I know that canonically, Nott currently trusts Molly about as far as she can throw him, but this is a bonding fic, dammit! also on ao3]

[no spoilers whatsoever!]

health to the company

If he could have one wish, Molly thought as he sprinted through the woods, it would be to get rid of ranged fucking weapons, javelins in particular. One embedded itself into the tree next to him with a particularly sickening thunk, but Molly didn’t pause to look.

It hadn’t started so terribly, really. At outset, it seemed like it was a quick get in, deal-with-the-nest-of-beasties, get out, get paid situation. But as was becoming business as usual for them, things went wrong rather abruptly. The beasties turned out to be much smarter than had initially been assumed, and armed to boot. Things had gone pear-shaped after that, they had scattered, and now they were attempting to retreat and regroup without getting skewered. There was a crashing in the bushes and Nott crossed his path, spotting him.

“Come on!” He shouted to her, and was just about to say something else when there was another thunk, but this time closer. Much closer.

He heard Nott shout his name and the next instant he was tumbling down, a blinding pain in his right calf.

Fucking javelins.

Distantly, he heard the sound of a crossbow firing once, twice, and a body hitting the dirt. He was scratching at the leaf-littered ground, trying to get purchase to drag himself out of the way, or make himself a harder target to hit, at least.

“Molly, he’s dead-he’s dead, it’s okay.” Nott dashed over to him, kneeling in front of his face. Lifting himself up onto his elbows, Molly looked into her frightened face. “Just stay right here, I’m gonna make sure no one’s coming.”

He just nodded, not entirely trusting his voice to hold up. Nott dashed off, and after a moment Molly let himself flop back down onto the ground. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, the pain of the javelin stuck in his leg was getting worse. Needing to know how bad it actually was, he turned to see, but craning his neck back to get a better look at the wound turned out to be a mistake.

While he was no stranger to the sight of blood, his own blood no less, there was something peculiarly upsetting about looking back and having visual confirmation for what was actually going on back there.

“Huh,” was all he said, as darkness took his vision.

He woke up to the feeling of someone grabbing his horn and pulling his head up.

“Come on Molly, you gotta stay awake,” he heard Nott pleading with him and she tapped the side of his face, probably gearing up to give him a slap.

He took a deep breath and opened his eyes, locking gaze with Nott. “I’m here, I’m with you.”

“Okay, good, good, now we deal with that,” she said, looking around frantically. She seemed to realize something and gently set him back down, digging through her pockets and pulling out a length of rope.

“This is probably gonna hurt,” she began, “and I’m sorry. But we can’t leave this thing in your leg.”

Molly rested his head on his forearms and stared intently at the embroidery on his sleeve. “It probably can’t hurt more than it does now, so do what you need to.”

He felt the rope loop around his leg once, twice, three times, and Nott murmured “I hope so,” and she cinched it so tight he saw stars.

He gasped, nails digging into his forearm, and Nott began apologizing. “Sorry! Sorry! It’s just so you don’t bleed out when I take out the javelin.”

“It’s fine,” he ground out. “Do what you need to.”

He heard her tying the knot-and was briefly amused by the pun-and then she was in front of him again, holding her flask and fidgeting with it.

“Here,” she said, passing it to him. “Just a sip, you’re gonna need it.”

Hauling himself up onto his elbows again, he focused on his reflection in the grimy metal, trying to stave off the tunnel vision. For her own part, Nott checked the tourniquet and planted her little foot on the back of his knee, readying to pull the glorified stick out of his leg. Unscrewing the cap, he held the flask up in an almost-toast and took a bracing sip.

‘Bracing’ wasn’t the right word to describe the actual sensation of the alcohol that hit his tongue. Sensation was the right word, however, since there wasn’t really a taste to speak of. It burned- like fire, like old moonshine, like the worst sort of rotgut they’d ever tried to make at the circus. It didn’t even taste like one particular type of spirit; it was just burning.

He almost didn’t notice the yank and the loud sucking sound of Nott pulling the javelin from his leg he was so distracted by it, which may have been the point. Had he not been in such abject pain, he’d have laughed.

“It’s out,” Nott stuttered, kneeling in front of him. “I’ll just bandage it so we can get you to Jester. Just--just keep calm, and don’t pass out.” She pulled the flask out of his hands and took a hearty draft of her own.

Truthfully, now that the javelin was out, he felt much better. He still wasn’t in any condition to walk, and the bleeding definitely needed to be seen to, but he no longer felt on the verge of fainting again.

“I feel like I should tell you the same thing,” he said. Her face was usually a rich green, but her complexion had gone sallow and her long nails tapped an anxious rhythm on the metal of the flask. He tried not to think about what he looked like, and forced a crooked smirk onto his lips to set her a little more at ease. “The medical kit is on my belt, should be some clean bandages in there.”

Nott set the flask back in one of her myriad pockets and set to work. He couldn’t see her, but he could tell she was making an effort to make noise so he could tell where she was.

“How’s it look?” He asked, in as idle a tone as he could.

“Pretty nasty, to be honest. But it should heal just fine once Jester sees to it,” Nott said. Molly could feel her folding up the cuff of his pants, and he appreciated that she didn’t just cut the obstructing fabric off.

There wasn’t a whole lot else to say; field-dressing a wound didn’t make for the best small talk material, but Molly was content to let Nott focus on bandaging his leg.

“Alright, that’s that.” Nott put the kit back on his belt, and rested her hand on his shoulder. “Think you can get up?”

“Only one way to find out,” he replied. Putting his sheathed scimitar under him like a cane, he tried to stand up, a plan that was swiftly thwarted when he couldn’t even bend his knee.

Nott just barely caught him, but she couldn’t hold his weight any better than he could, so they both ended up on the ground. On his back staring up at the canopy, Molly started to laugh. Part of it was caused by the jitters that were setting in after the adrenaline rush of the past few minutes, but most of it was from sheer joy at having survived. He probably sounded a touch hysterical, but Nott joined in and they laughed together for a little bit.

“Well,” he said after the giggles had subsided, “I guess we’ll have to get the others to come to us.”

Nott helped pull him over to a tree so he was sitting up, at least. “You’re right. Hold on, I’ll let them know.”

She pulled out a little coil of copper wire and held it up, making a couple of hand gestures that Molly vaguely recognized. She focused, closing her eyes and muttering, and after a moment sighed and tucked the wire back in one of her many pockets.

“I told Caleb where we are, and that you can’t walk. He’s gonna get the others to come to us once the fight is done.”

He nodded, and patted the patch of ground next to him. “Let’s catch our breath, then.”

She sat down next to him, pulling her flask out.

“What the hell is in that, by the way?” He asked.

Nott shrugged. “Oh, you know, a little of this, a little of that. I keep it topped up with whatever I can get.” She took a casual pull off it, like it wasn’t anything stronger than wine.

She looked him up and down, and seemed to decide that he needed a bit more, and held out the flask. He took it, and took another sip; now that he knew what to expect it went down a sight easier than the last time.

“Next town we get to, you’re pouring that out and I’m buying you some better booze.” She started to say something, and he held up a hand. “No buts. Consider it my thanks.”

She didn’t seem to know what to make of that, and considered it for a moment before smiling brightly at him.

“Thanks, Molly, that’s real nice of you.” She said, leaning into his side. Caleb was usually the only person she would let get so close, although Molly had noticed Jester slowly working her way there. It was...hard to describe, being granted something like this.

He patted her shoulder, and they slipped into silence again. This was a much more comfortable silence, now that he wasn’t bleeding into the dirt.

“How’d you get so good at bandaging wounds?” He asked, because even the most comfortable silence wasn’t one he wanted to sit through.

Nott waved vaguely. “Oh, you know, around.”

“Spent a lot of time patching Caleb up?”

“Yup. Or him patching me up. Sometimes a plan would go wrong, and then there’s a lot of patching needs to happen. Got quite a bit of practice in.”

“I suppose so,” he replied, biting back the curiosity that rose every time one of them alluded to their pasts. This wasn’t the time, when he was still hazy from blood loss and getting hazier from drink.

Nott’s ears perked up, and a second or two later Molly heard the sound of their friends crashing through the woods. Everyone was a little worse for wear but no one seemed too badly injured, and when Jester knelt down next to him there was still magic shimmering around her hands. Nott jumped up and ran to give Caleb a hug, seemingly content that Molly was in good hands. They clucked over each other’s injuries in equal measure, and Molly felt a swell of fondness that wasn’t entirely sardonic at the sight.

“It seems like that was the last of them,” Fjord said, helping Molly up onto his feet once Jester finished healing his leg. It was still sore, but he could stand on it with a bit of help. “We figure we can go back in the morning to see if there’s any loot, and tell the guard what’s happened.”

“Sounds good. I could use a drink.”

And together, they all limped back to town.

 ////\\\\////\\\\////\\\\

 Back in the tavern things were quiet. Hardly surprising, given how late it was, but at least there was someone at the bar who looked up when they came in.

“My good sir,” Molly proclaimed, “We have had quite the night and are in need of a nightcap.”

“Not me,” Beau said. Her bloody knuckles and the slouch in her shoulders spoke to her exhaustion. “I’m going to bed, I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Yeah, me too,” Jester agreed, turning to follow Beau up to their shared room. “Nobody get into any fights till the morning!”

Caleb sat down heavily at the nearest table. “A quick drink sounds like a good idea, actually.”

Fjord nodded, and was turning to go to the bar when Molly caught his elbow. “My treat,” he said. Not one to pass up a free drink, Fjord sat down at the same table Caleb and Nott had settled in to.

It took a bit of maneuvering, but he managed to bring the four drinks back to the table without spilling any. Setting them down, he flopped into his own chair and raised his glass in a toast.

“To flying by the seat of our pants, and winning by the skin of our teeth.”

Caleb huffed a tired laugh, and raised his glass as well. He was visibly singed, and had a nasty looking bruise blooming under his eye, which looked especially bad in the low light of the fire.

Fjord didn’t seem too interested in toasts, but raised his glass gamely nevertheless. For his own part, he was sporting a nasty gash along his arm that had been healed by Jester, but still looked raw.

Nott reached up and clinked her glass with Caleb’s, and all four of them silently drank.

“Will you be alright if we need to travel tomorrow, Mollymauk?” Caleb asked after a couple minutes of restful quiet.

“Should be fine if I can sit in the cart,” he answered. “Nott did a bang-up job patching me up.” Caleb smiled at that, wrapping an arm around Nott’s shoulders and pulling her close.

The conversation gently flowed for a while after that, before Caleb had finished his glass and left to go to bed. Nott gave him a quick hug and he patted her hair, and then there were three at the table.

“So skinny, I don’t know how he drinks so fast,” Fjord muttered, a crooked smile on his face. There wasn’t much left in his glass either, and it wasn’t long before Fjord was bidding the two of them goodnight.

Once Fjord had gone upstairs, Molly turned to Nott. “I haven’t forgotten, by the way. You want to pour out that flask, I’ll fill it up fresh.”

“You sure?” She asked. “It’s a big flask.”

“Completely sure.”

She skittered outside, and came back just as quickly. She pressed the flask into his hands, and even empty it was surprisingly heavy.

Molly stepped back up to the bar, empty flask in hand. “One last request, before we turn in for the evening.” He set the flask on the bar with a dramatic flourish. “How much to fill this with your finest whiskey?”

The barkeep looked at Molly suspiciously for a moment, then seemed to decide that an ornamented, tattooed tiefling asking for a large flask full of booze wasn’t something he wanted to investigate. “Two gold,” he replied simply, holding his hand out.

“Good man,” Molly said with a wink, passing the coin and the vessel over. When he set it back down in front of Nott, she beamed at him. Her mask was on, so he wasn’t treated to the full sight of her sharp, snaggletoothed grin, but her eyes were crinkled up at the corners.

“Let’s do this again,” Nott said. “But maybe not because we almost died. The next time we’re in a good town?”

“I’d like that,” He replied. They went upstairs to their respective rooms, and Molly found himself hoping that chance came as soon as possible.

 ////\\\\////\\\\////\\\\

 Things continued on like this for a little while. They would bounce from town to town, doing odd jobs and making money where they could, and invariably spending a good portion of that money in taverns. Molly and Nott would seek out the strongest or most interesting local spirits. They would spend the occasional evening up until the small hours of the morning, talking about all manner of things. It was pleasant, and reminded Molly of the best parts of living at the carnival. Nott was charming and sweet in her own way, and gave teasing just as good as she got.

“You’re an alchemist, right?” He asked one night, a glass and a half into a particularly impressive bottle of brandy. “You mix all sorts of things?”

“Yeah, a bit,” Nott replied, “Nothing too fancy, though. I can make acid and alchemist’s fire and stuff like that.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Nott, that’s pretty impressive.” He poured out another nip of brandy and left the bottle between them.

“You know anything about distilling?”

Nott just grinned for a bit and sipped her drink, seemingly enjoying keeping him in suspense.

“I might know a thing or two,” she said. “It’s easier than making alchemist’s fire, and twice as fun, I’ll say that much.”

Molly laughed and raised his glass. “I’ll drink to that.”

Things would only get more interesting from here, and Molly looked forward to seeing them.

[djinn-and-djuice]

Update:

I’ve been trying to write a fic every week, but I don’t think that’s going to happen this week. My wrist has been really bothering me, and I haven’t been able to use my right hand much at all since thursday. Believe me, it tortures me to not be able to write, but I wanted to give you all a heads-up

[djinn-and-djuice]

(beau is proving to be a very interesting character. well, they all are. but the comment she made, about her parents wanting a son and naming her beau because of that, has been mulling in my brain for a while. so here, a lovely cup of mulled fic, for all of you. the quote at the start is from Scuffle, my song for beau and recommended listening. also on ao3)

[contains no spoilers! yay]

nomenclature

--

[i didn’t catch you sayin’ grace, motherfucker/so tell me, how does my name taste?/spit it out and tell me/how does my name taste?]

 /\/\/\

“Beauregard? That’s a big name for a girl your size.”

The monk who says this looks at her with a smile, like his pretty blue robes and the fancy symbol around his neck mean that he understands her, that they’re friends.

She just wants to break his nose.

“Yeah, well, my parents wanted a boy. But then I happened!” She shrugs, baring her teeth in what could only be called a smile if one was feeling very charitable. “But they’d already picked out the name, and I’d already disappointed them enough, so they stuck with it.”

The smile on the monk’s face falters. Good.

 ~*~

 Two years later and ‘Beauregard’ becomes ‘Beau’ becomes ‘oh joy, it’s fucking Beau’.

It doesn’t bother her.

She spends her days cracking her knuckles against trees, swinging staves with increasing precision, and learning how to kick ass from anyone who’ll talk to her for more than thirty seconds. Half the monastery hates her and she can hear it in their voices, but she can’t bring herself to care when one of the sisters knocks her halfway across the courtyard and shouts “you’re getting there, Beau!” with something approaching pride in her voice.

She’s got blood in her teeth, but it tastes so sweet.

 ~*~

 The first time she sees his name written, she thinks it’s a joke.

“Fjord.”

“Yeah?”

“So that’s how it’s said. Not Fjord?”

“That works too.”

“So you’re cool if I call you Fjord.” She drags every last consonant over her teeth like metal across a piece of slate, and is rewarded with his grimace but no real reprisal comes. He’s surprisingly easygoing, although given whom he’s traveling with he probably needs to be.

“Maybe not that one.”

“But it doesn’t bother you?” She asks.

He shrugs, and turns his attention back to his dinner. “Not so much. Lotta worse things a person can be called.”

And she knows that, she figures he’s heard more than a few; half-orcs cut intimidating figures, but that doesn’t mean people stop being shitty.

But she knows what it’s like to hate the sound used to call you. And she’ll take the fact to her grave and never tell a soul, but she doesn’t want to be the one making someone else feel like that.

Fjord glances over at her, and seems to read something in her face. “Tell you what,” he says. “I take issue with any of your more creative choices, I’ll let you know. Till then, don’t worry yourself about it.”

She can do that.

 ~*~

 “Your mother named you Jester?”

Jester’s laugh is like bells at her question, like Beau has just made some wonderful joke. Or maybe Beau is the joke.

“No, silly! I named me Jester.” She pats Beau’s shoulder like she’s speaking to a particularly dull child, and Beau would take offense if it weren’t so charming.

Jester is awfully lucky that she’s so cute.

“You see, when a Tiefling is old enough, we choose our own name! Sometimes we name ourselves after something we like, or something we want to be, things like that. My mother said it’s called a ‘virtue name’.”

“And you chose Jester. Why?”

“Well that is a very personal choice Beau, I don’t know if I know you well enough yet.”

She can’t argue with that, and shrugs agreeably.

Undeterred, Jester claps her hands excitedly. “But someday we will know each other that well! I hope. And I hope you will tell me all about your name too!”

“Sure,” Beau replies, because who knows.

 ~*~

 “Oh, I’m Nott,” the girl says, and it’s disconcerting to hear her talk and not see her lips moving.

They’re all very aware at this point that she’s a goblin, and Beau’s never met a goblin before. She has no idea if that’s a customary goblin name or if goblins just pick words from Common and use them as names, like what some humans do with Elvish.

‘Not what?’ is what she wants to ask, but that’s a line of questioning she’s not keen to have turned on her.

‘Beauregard’ is supposed to mean ‘highly regarded’, after all.

 ~*~

 Yasha is tall, and statuesque, and intimidating as all fuck.

So naturally Beau can’t help herself. She hangs around Yasha, makes idle conversation just to hear her deep voice. She’s yet to make Yasha laugh, but to be honest Beau’s not sure if Yasha has ever laughed, so she doesn’t consider that a failing on her part.

They’re leaving town shortly, and Yasha is going off to do whatever it is she does when she’s not around. They’ve made plans to meet up in the northeast, a couple towns over. Before she strides off into the woods, Yasha nods in her direction.

“See you there, Beau.”

She’ll never get tired of hearing that.

 ~*~

 “The mollymauk floatin’ on his wide white wings, and lord what a lonely song he sings, down upon the southern ocean, sailing down below Cape Horn”

The cart is rolling slowly northward on the amber road, and Fjord is sitting at the reins, softly singing. Beau doesn’t think he even realizes he’s doing it-it sounds like an old sea shanty, but she can hear the words clearly enough.

Molly, for his part, is reclining in the back of the cart staring at the clouds. He’s an ostentatious smartass, and Beau can barely stand him, but he’s handy enough in a fight. And hell, she’s curious.

“Did you choose Mollymauk?” She asks walking alongside the cart.

“...The fuck are you on about?” Is his eloquent reply.

“Your name. Mollymauk. Did you choose it?” She gestures to Fjord, who’s finished his song and seems to be dutifully trying to ignore the conversation behind him. “Jester told me she picked out her name, that it was a Tiefling thing.”

He sits up at that, and she is treated to the sight of him staring at her, one eyebrow raised nearly to his hairline. It’s always a little eerie looking Molly in the eye since he has no real pupils.

“And you think I’d choose to name myself after a bird that never lands, and carries the souls of drowned sailors?” He lies back down, and that seems to be that.

She realizes a while later that he never actually answered her.

 ~*~

 “Caleb.”

Caleb flinches, looking up from his book to meet her eye. He looks spooked, and also kinda like he’s not entirely sure she’s not about to hit him.

“Yes, Beauregard?”

Caleb always looks a little scared at everything, though, even if he’s good at keeping his voice even and his spine straight. He always seems to expect that everything will go terribly, and plans accordingly.

It’s kinda why she likes him. What she isn’t too fond of is him sticking to using her whole gods-damned name.

“Why do you call me that?”

“That is your name, is it not?”

“Well yeah,” she blusters, not expecting that sort of response, “But it’s long. Everyone else just calls me Beau.”

He puts his book down and shuts it, giving her a considering look. “If you cast a spell and do not say everything properly, it will go terribly wrong. It is not in my nature to change people’s names, even for the sake of convenience. To call you something that you are not is beyond rude.”

Which actually makes sense, so she can’t bring herself to be mad at it. But there’s still that tiny sting-less than it used to be, but still present-that she feels every time he rolls out all three syllables, even if it’s not coming from him.

She sits down across from him, not entirely sure what to say. She wants to hit something, and she’s not sure why. She just scratches along the grain of the table, gathering her thoughts.

Luckily, Caleb seems to have an idea of what to say so he speaks. “But nothing stays the same forever. And gods know I have been wrong before. If I have been calling you something that you are not, I apologize. Beau it is.”

She nods. “It’s fine.”

“It is perfectly understandable to put something down because the weight of the past is too much. I hope I did not place that burden back on your shoulders.”

She thinks, maybe, it’s not so heavy anymore. She doesn’t hear the disappointment anymore, when people say her name. She doesn’t hear the dismay, or annoyance. She doesn’t hear the echoing of the gulf between her name and the person she turned out to be. It’s been drowned out by the people who shout it in joy, or concern, or pride. Maybe that sting can finally go away. She can take the yoke that her parents laid around her neck and make it hers.

“I’ll let you know?” She replies. Caleb nods, and opens his book with a soft smile.

“That’s all I could ask.”

[djinn-and-djuice]

(Molly had his little breakdown in the bar, which I found interesting. So I decided to explore it a little bit, and wrote this! It’s technically gen, but there’s a strong thread of molly/caleb running through it. if that’s not your cup of tea, it’s easy to read as platonic. also on ao3)

[spoilers: set after episode 5: The Open Road, and picks up right where the episode ends]

threshold

~*~

Whatever the hell Krut had given him was something else, Molly reflected as he slowly made his way back up to the room where the rest of the group was. The intensely herbal liqueur had cleared his sinuses as surely as it had filled the rest of his head with cotton, so while he wouldn't say he was drunk-he had certainly been drunker in his life, that was for sure-navigating the stairs was more of a challenge than usual. It had done an admirable job of calming his nerves, and focusing on keeping his feet where they were supposed to be was a welcome distraction from the anxiety that was dogging him.

The cries of townsfolk had died off by the time he had finished his drink, and when he pressed his ear to the door he couldn't hear anything from the interior of the room. Everyone was finally asleep, it seemed.

He'd had plenty of practice sneaking around at the carnival, he knew how to navigate a room without waking anybody. He opened the door, the hinges swinging free with barely a whisper. Scanning the room to make sure Beau wasn’t passed out on the floor right in front of him-he wouldn’t have put it past her, honestly-he pulled off his boots and gingerly stepped in.

Distantly, as though everything was coming to him through heavy felt, he remembered watching Caleb run his magic silver thread over every entrance and exit to the room. Of course, that memory came to him only as his foot crossed the threshold.

Well, there was no going back now.

He winced internally as his foot set silently down and Caleb sat bolt upright in bed, reaching for something. Through the faint hallway light, he could see alarm and naked fear on Caleb’s face quickly morph into calm, and something like relief? He watched Caleb drag a weary hand over his face before holding it up to him in greeting. Returning the gesture, Molly walked to the other end of the room from where Beau was, making to lie down. Caleb waved again to catch his attention, and pointed to an empty bed. In response, Molly pointed back at Beau, who was curled up on the floor. Caleb only shrugged, and Molly took better stock of the room. Fjord and Jester had taken a bed each, but Nott was-

Nott was curled up on Caleb’s bed next to his knees, tucked under his tattered coat. She was so small Molly had barely noticed her. That’s what Caleb had been reaching for, he had been trying to shield her from whatever he briefly thought Molly had been. He hadn’t missed how she and Caleb seemed to orbit around each other, and he definitely hadn’t missed Caleb’s comment about living on the road, and Molly knew how it was. You stayed close to the people you could trust. If it meant that he got to sleep in a bed, that was twice a blessing.

Molly closed the door behind him and went over to the empty bed, shrugging out of his coat and draping it over the end of the mattress. Leaning over and standing back up made his head spin, so he rested a hand on the footboard and just stood for a second.

He watched as Caleb very delicately turned and climbed out of bed, patting Nott’s hair to help settle her back down when she started to wake. He blindly picked through one of his bags before producing a spool of thread and squinting at it in the darkness.

Right, the spell needed to be reset. Did it really, though? It wasn’t like they were sleeping out in a field or anything. There was the whole group of them, less Yasha, and they were in a town full of people with a Crownsguard regiment that seemed to have their heads screwed on straight. But if it made Caleb feel better he wasn’t about to say anything, he was self-aware enough to know he didn’t have room to talk about coping mechanisms.

There was the dull thump of Caleb’s foot connecting solidly with the end of the bed, and Molly remembered that he couldn’t see anything in the darkness. Stifling a chuckle, he walked over and took Caleb’s hand to guide him. He put Caleb’s hand on his shoulder, like he had seen Nott do when Caleb was looking through Frumpkin’s eyes, and was surprised by how distinctly he could feel the delicate bones in his wrist. It was only ten steps to the door, but that was still enough for Molly to take a good look at him.

He knew Caleb wasn't the strongest of their little band of misfits, but without the coat and other layers he looked dangerously thin, almost waifish. Molly could understand how that could come to be, he knew how a life of wandering exposed one to the bite of lean times and hard winters. And gods knew that Caleb could be knocked down by little more than a stiff breeze. But it was still an arresting realization, when aligned with the quiet way Caleb carried himself. Molly felt like there was something he should do with this knowledge, but damned if he knew what.

Caleb nodded in thanks and cracked the door open, which, while not much, apparently gave him enough light to work by. Molly turned and went back to the bed, and began the process of wrapping up his swords and dressing down.

Getting ready to sleep wasn't usually a ten-minute-long affair, but it felt rude to bed down while Caleb was recasting the spell he had broken. So he took extra care with wrapping his swords, and folded his clothes precisely.

Absently, Molly found himself wondering why that sort of nicety bothered him now. Before, he wouldn't have cared. Back in the carnival, he certainly wouldn't have waited up for anyone, except for maybe Yasha. What made these people so special that he’d lose sleep for them?

They were alright folk, amusing, mostly useful, and rough enough to be interested in keeping a reprobate like him around, which he certainly appreciated; even Beau was tolerable when she wasn’t talking. He thought about Jester, her effervescent cheer that, for all its innocence, was somehow so magnetic. Her bright, cheerful smile was a warm thought, but unbidden the image came to him of her face not a couple hours ago, sooty, bruised, and frightened after she revived him. That led to a dark rabbit hole of thoughts, one that he had paid unnecessarily good coin to drink away. He sat down on the edge of the bed, all the thoughts that had been writhing in his mind after the fight coming back full force. He didn’t even hear the gentle chime of the bell that marked the end of the spellcasting, only coming back to himself when Caleb’s feet came into his field of view.

"Are you alright, Mollymauk?"

The barest whisper, but against the silence of the room he could hear Caleb as clearly as if he had shouted. His Zemnian accent rounded the consonants and heightened the vowels, turning his name into three lilting syllables that Molly was only vaguely sure he recognized.

Or maybe that was the drink.

Either way, Molly nodded, checking himself at the last second so he didn’t set his jewelry ringing. Focusing on the careful process of removing metal and gems without getting them tangled, he collected himself enough to answer.

“I’m just dandy,” he replied, wrapping the jewelry in a piece of old velvet and steadfastly not looking Caleb in the face.

“Was that your first time falling in a fight?” He asked, and Molly cursed his luck to have been stuck with such keen folk. He said nothing, which didn’t seem to bother Caleb, who sat down on the bed next to him.

“I will not pry, you do not have to explain yourself to me. But I understand.”

Molly looked over at Caleb then, and the bags under his tired eyes seemed even darker. Despite them, a wry, self-deprecating smile pulled at the corner of his mouth.

"But it will be okay, even if right now it doesn’t seem so," Caleb murmured, so quiet he was barely more than mouthing the words. There was something in his expression that Molly couldn’t quite read, but whatever it was it left in an instant as Caleb looked away and went on. "And I cannot say I know what we're doing, but we're doing it together. We're a slapdash bunch of weirdos, but we’re here for you, Mollymauk. I am here for you, at the very least."

"You don't need to worry about me," he said, waving off Caleb's concern.

Caleb just huffed a silent, humorless laugh. "I worry about everything. At least in your case I'd be worrying over something worthwhile."

Again, Molly was at a loss. Caleb reached out, grasping Molly’s shoulder. “Well. Try to get some sleep. Tomorrow will come regardless, we should try to be ready for it.”

Molly watched silently as Caleb climbed back into bed, first taking a moment to brush Nott’s hair out of her face and adjust the coat over her. As he lay down, he kept one arm gently draped across her back.

For his own part, Molly just lay staring at the ceiling. In some ways, things hadn’t changed too much. He was still traveling aimlessly with a bunch of misfits, trying to make enough coin to keep food in their bellies and the rain off their backs. But there was something new, and he wasn’t quite sure what it was.

For the first time in a long time, Molly felt like he might find what he was looking for. He listened to the gentle hush of the room. There was a new sort of calm that suffused him, independent of the liquor. And in a cramped inn, in a room ringed with silver, surrounded by his new companions, he found some rest.