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The cave is cold, but Caleb has endured colder, so he does not complain. It is also dark and it smells strongly of raw earth and there is no way of telling time here aside from the clock that keeps tick, tick, ticking in Caleb's mind.
So he says aloud the hour. To keep track of them, to keep them lined up, to keep them from getting so tangled that Caleb loses more of the time that already slipped through his fingers like honey so many times before.
It is not a lot, but. It is enough, for now. Time is not slipping from his grasp, he is not anchorless, he is okay. He is. He is okay.
It is a little hard to breathe sometimes in the dark, but that is normal now, has been since he ran and left behind a cold and miserable place for the mad and broken. It is simple anxiety, an effect of his sins on his psyche and body.
Nothing more.
He does not tell the others, of course. They have to be focused on their task, after all, and saying it will only cause splintered attention and prying eyes and questions, and- It is not his place to complain.
Nott needs this. Needs him.
(Your people- It was your people that have done this to my people. They are your people, your people, your people-
Meine Gotter, it stings, it stings, it stings, it-)
He does not say anything and it is a small thing, after all. He stays quiet, save for the announcing of the time. He knows they assume it to be another quirk, another idiosyncrasy to add to the ever-expanding list of his flaws.
-
He does not dare wonder how many items are already on that list of his flaws. If he spent time counting out each one, there is a nonzero chance he will not ever find an end to the list.
Deine Leute. Meine Leute.
Your people.
My people.
-
“5:00 o'clock,” he says to the group that groans in response, but he does not let that faze him. It is easy. He has spent time on the road with eyes following his every move and he has spent time being different people, not all of which were as reserved as he is. It is simple, sometimes, to act like someone else.
A different accent, some name chosen at random, a made-up past, a meaningless goal.
He has been so many people. Sometimes he misses them. It is easier to be them rather than himself. Sometimes he thinks it was easier when he was broken and mad rather than being tentatively sane.
Friedrich, a baker looking for work and a companion to help him through the cold days, coming from a small town from which he came from a simple family that he remains in contact with throughout his travels. But he is not Friedrich. He is not happy or content enough to be Friedrich and his chest is hollow with the absence of everything that Friedrich 'has'.
Wilhelm, a farmer from far lands that has quick fingers and a penchant for drinking, quick on the trigger and full of stories about fights he's been in. He is not Wilhelm. He is not stupid or reckless enough to be Wilhelm and his heart pounds with every distasteful scowl that the guards send his way when he stumbles through the streets and vomits into an alleyway.
Jonas, a young man from a large and lonely family that has spent so long in silence he fears it, so he tells stories and he drinks and he laughs and he's a vibrant colorful mess of emotions. He is not Jonas, though. He is not loud or interesting enough to be Jonas and his skin itches when people approach him to ask for a dance and for a name and for permission to touch that Jonas will want to give but Caleb doesn't.
(“My name is- Bren.”)
He is:
Crystals and leather cutting into wrists and his own keening howls, fire and ash in his eyes, nose, throat and screams and even more screams- his mother's, his father's, his own.
He is:
Arms wrapped around his middle, keeping him from running in, keeping him held down to the ground as the universe burns and shatters around him.
(Bren is Zemnian for 'burn' and sometimes he wonders about the irony of his parents choosing that name for their beloved bastard of a son.)
He is: Caleb Widogast.
Caleb Widogast the odd wizard, the sorrow-manufactured mage, ally and friend of the Mighty Nein.
Friend of a pirate half-orc with a love for the sea, a trickstery tiefling with a heart larger than Caleb's ever seen elsewhere, a storm-born aasimar with flowers and secrets to boot, a gentle firbolg with a soft voice and kind hands and a gift for dealing with the dead, a reckless monk with issues they're working on, a flamboyant tiefling whose name still burns the silence every time it is mentioned, and a goblin who was not always a goblin.
They are an odd bunch. That much is certain.
He cannot quite complain about that though. Were his companions closer to normal, he has no doubt he'd be on the street before the day could end, running as fast as his feet can take him, trying to hide once more behind false names and false stories and false everythings.
Normal people do not feel the need to go to the bottom of the ocean, or lock nobles out on the balconey, or punch ghosts.
Yet-
Yet he is glad they are not a normal group. Because his companions do not flinch at his silence or scowl at his reservations. Somehow, when you take a lot of dysfunctional, broken people and throw them together, you get a somewhat-working unit. A team.
A family?
Knowing everyone else has their secrets and their pain and their own issues makes it a little easier to breathe, sometimes. Because he doesn't have to laser-focus on his own problems all the time when he can focus on trying to fix someone else's.
They are unruly hearts beholden to nobody but if the universe is merciful, perhaps there will be enough of a flame left in them by the end of their journey to light their way home.
-
He has not had a home in a very long time, but. But maybe home is not a place. Maybe it can be a pile of old books and gentle arms and warm yellow eyes and a cup of tea in his hands. Maybe it can be whatever this is supposed to be.
-
They continue walking all day. Caleb's feet ache with the strain, his muscles protesting. He is used to running, of course he is- he is small and weak and vulnerable and the world is full of beasts with hungry mouths full of sharp teeth and hands with merciless claws- but his shoes are not exactly made for long walks through stone passages.
Beau continues reading aloud the book. Caleb does not hate it as much as he expected. It is, after all, something to keep him rooted as well. Grounded. The story flows, and much like it, time does as well. Time does not stop, stutter, jump.
(He cannot breathe but Beau's hand is on his shoulder and even though the ground feels like liquid underneath him, he has her spine and for a moment, he can stand long enough to recount his sorrow to the people who have bothered staying long enough to find it out.)
It flows.
Caleb commends her on her reading. He listens with half an ear, keeps his eye out for anything in the dark, pushes forth.
“8 o'clock,” he says when it is time. Jester casts her spell and bells accompany his voice. It is eerie. He likes it.
-
The “night” is harder to deal with. Night means sleep, means dreams, means hands stained in ash when he wakes.
Caleb is not so naive so as to think being underground would change that small staple, of course.
So they set up the hut, they prepare for sleep, and Caleb watches his friends getting ready for slumber.
Fjord lays on the ground, arms crossed over his chest, sleeping straight and still like a soldier who's done it a million times before. Beside him, Beau does the same, though she throws her arm over her eyes and her muscles relax as she begins to lightly snore. Yasha chooses a spot besides Beau, quickly laying down and not moving again.
Jester is quite the opposite from Fjord. She takes up space like she someone who is unafraid of being punished for it and she does not fold herself up to cover the most vulnerable parts of her. Caleb wonders if she knows which parts of her body are most susceptible to attacks, wonders if she cares.
It is... Something that Caleb does not know how to describe. A part of him wants to chide her for it, to warn her of leaving herself open to blows, but-
She is innocent.
She is young, perhaps not in body, but her soul is youthful and good and Caleb would sooner throw himself into a fire than be the one to ruin that.
(“I am glad you see good in me.”)
Caduceus situates himself to Caleb's left, curling up his long limbs to fit better in the cramped space. Pink hair catches Caleb's eyes, and he wonders if it is as soft as it looks. If it is as soft and as forgiving as Caduceus' eyes.
He does not test the idea, much as his fingers may itch in treacherous want of physical contact.
(“You break everything you touch.” A cold, tutting voice of someone in a uniform. A soft whimper that makes its way from his lips against his will as a syringe sinks into his arm. Then nothing. Cold tender nothing.)
Caduceus looks like he wants to ask Caleb something, but he closes his mouth and doesn't speak. He pushes a piece of bread into Caleb's hands though, and that says enough.
Caduceus knows. Of course he does. He knows a lot of things. He knows about people and how to sew together the wounds that pervade their hearts. He is not exactly smart, but he is brilliant with broken things. Broken things like shattered swords and Caleb Widogast.
(Strong, steady hands wrap around him as he slides into the familiar blankness of his mind that even time itself cannot touch. His breaths rip stinging holes in his chest and his eyes see nothing, his body feels nothing but the heat of the body holding him.
Broken boy with bloodied hands. When will you learn that sentiment will always leave you hollow?
A warm soothing voice, rumbling so deeply that Caleb can feel it in his bones. “You're not at fault here. You're the solution here.”)
Nott is the last one to find her place. She looks to Caleb on instinct, because they share their beds, they have always shared their beds. They don't have a bed now, but they've always shared spaces as well.
But there has been distance since the letter and the chair and the words that fell like chalk outlines on the pavement. They've since apologized and talked about it, but there is still distance.
It was small. Almost unnoticable. But it was there, just now. There is silence between them, an entire ocean of unsaid words and sorrow, but neither of them are quite adept at swimming through regret and heartbreak as they should be.
11:13 o'clock.
He watches as she shifts from side to side, then focuses on Frumpkin instead, who crawls his way into Caleb's lap, the warmth of his body pressing against Caleb's chest. The claws bite ever so gently into Caleb's skin but he does not complain. It is a comforting thing, to feel.
Caleb does not speak. Does not know what he would say if he did try to speak. He has questions for Nott that he does not have the skill to mold into words.
So he stays silent. He eyes the group, then presses his back against the wall and leans his head back when she doesn't speak.
Silence.
Caleb has never liked the silence. Silence meant secrets and hidden thoughts and feet on the precipice and cold sterile rooms and it meant cold eyes and scalpels and-
“Can I sleep here?” Nott finally asks. Caleb nods without meeting her eyes. He feels her move close to him, but she doesn't touch him.
Caleb remains sitting up for a while with Frumpkin in his lap and his eyes staring at his friends without seeing them. He recounts his spells to keep merciless things from ravaging his mind. He counts the water that keeps dripping.
He listens to the breaths of his friends to know they are still there, watches the way their chests rise and fall with their breaths. It comforts him more than he wants it to.
The night continues forward like a lumbering zombie and Caleb's mind drifts restlessly from thought to thought. He thinks of blue eyes and a boy named Luke and he wonders about hello's shared in musty prison cells.
He wonders about the crystals that were once buried in his skin and about corrupt mentors and ambitious teenagers that dreamed of touching the sky.
He wonders about the weak quivering hope he might possibly have found something worth staying for and the devastation of that day, of those words that took everything he had carefully built and blew it down in a single blow and he'd been ready to leave, running on the raw emotional toll of that exchange.
He thinks about Caduceus' gaze on him, telling him, “don't go,” because he knew that Caleb's veins sang the song of all absconders and cowards and if he hadn't, then- well, Caleb may have well left under the cloak of night because his people were coming, they were, they were, and they've already hurt Nott but he can prevent them from doing so much worse by leaving.
He thinks about Beau looking at him, her hand on his shoulder as he tried to remember how to put air into his lungs and how to put one foot in front of the other as he stumbled into the room they'd rented for the night. Alone, of course. Nott was in a different room, and, well, he has never been more relieved to be in his own room than he was right then.
He thinks about Fjord and the pale scar across his palm, a promise of a favor being returned for the blood he'd spilt for Fjord's quest.
Because relationships work that way. They always have.
Ask. Barter. Deal. Done.
Rinse and repeat.
Command. Obedience. Reward.
That is how it used to be before always has been.
-
Trent's voice comes from above him as he quivers and gasps in short breaths, trying to get enough into his lungs even though his body doesn't seem to remember how breathing works. “You're doing so well.”
There are tears pouring down his face and he should be braver but he is not. His vision is white with torment and his mind burns like holy fire but Trent's voice follows him into the place his mind goes to when it dissolves during these sessions.
“You're being very brave right now. You will be rewarded.”
-
His mind wanders into the unknown and returns with only a deep sense of hopelessness and despair. He is unaware that his mind had drifted until he hears a quiet chiding, “stop that,” and he looks over to see Nott facing him with a small frown on her face.
He freezes. Takes stock of the situation, runs it back over in his head.
What does she mean?
He'd been sitting there, silent- he knows he was silent, had made sure of it- and he'd hardly even moved, and-
Ah. His fingers had found its way to his forearms, picking at the wrappings that hide his secrets. As his mind had spiraled, his traitorous hands had picked at the wrappings, apparently. How long, how long, how long until I can no longer feel them?
“Sorry,” he says, “I did not mean to wake you. I didn't realize I disturbed you.”
But her eyes shift more, into something else. Not anger, but. Something. Something he cannot decipher and he doesn't have the energy to decipher.
She looks back down at his arms. “You didn't... But you're going to hurt yourself if you keep on scratching your arms.”
Caleb wants to say that it wouldn't matter if he did, but he doesn't. He knows better than that, because saying it didn't matter would make her argue it does, and well, he does not have the capacity for a debate.
Or perhaps she wouldn't. Perhaps she would remain quiet on the matter, silently agree without agreeing outright like the people at the asylum would agree with him sometimes. He doesn't have the capacity to make up for the silence either.
He is not good with people, but- Nott is different. He knows what makes Nott's eyes turn to frustration, sadness, joy. He is not good, but he is not completely useless either. Not with Nott, anyway.
Caleb knows Nott. (Veth Brenatto.)
Nott knows Caleb. (Bren Aldric Ermendrud.)
Instead, he says, “Thank you. I did not notice.” It is not a lie.
12:29 o'clock
She does not respond. He feels her staring at him for a long, long while until her eyes drift closed and her breaths even out.
Caleb taps his fingers against his knee. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, stop. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, stop.
One. Eins.
Two. Zwei.
Three. Drei.
Four. Vier.
Five. Funf.
Six. Sechs.
Seven. Sieben.
Stop.
An old habit from childhood, long before the Mighty Nein, or the nuthouse, or Ikithon, or the academy. Something still untouched by sorrow or pain or the gnawing terror and emptiness of adulthood.
“Are you scared?” Peter asks and Caleb looks up from the hill they are about to ride down and frowns. “It's okay if you are. I am, too.”
“We could get hurt,” Caleb says, looking at the sharp turn of the hill and how it descends into gnarled trees and boulders.
“You want to know what I do when I'm scared?”
Caleb, curious, young, nods.
“I count.” He pulls back a bit, sitting on his legs. “Give me a number.”
“Seven.” His father's favorite number. One for each of them in the family, plus Caleb and Frumpkin and Peter.
Peter thinks for a second before he nods. “Okay. So count in your head, eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben so you don't have to be scared. It's very easy.”
Caleb ends up laughing at the odd idea, but he nods. He sits beside Peter and he lets Peter push them off and they go down the hill, and he counts in his head. The next time he is scared, he is a little older, but he counts. He counts and he counts every time but when he is a lot older and there is smoke in his lungs, he forgets to count and the fire grows bigger and bigger and the screams grow louder and-
Eins. Fjord snoring lightly, muttering something in orcish as his chest rises and falls like the currents of the sea being pulled back before slamming back against the shore.
Zwei. Caduceus with his body curled up to make space for others, his knee lightly pressed against Caleb's leg.
Drei. Beau's staff pushed against the wall, a bow still tied around the end of it. Nobody asked. Nobody dared to.
Vier. Jester's dress getting caught as she twists, turns, wakes only long enough to get her foot free from the dress and then returning back to sleep.
Funf. Yasha curled up besides Beau, her dark hair flowing around her like a halo.
Sechs. Nott's breaths, warming the parts of Caleb's arm that are not covered by the dirty trenchcoat or the wrappings.
Sieben. Caleb finally situates himself, lying down. There is a possibility of a fight tomorrow (there always is with the Mighty Nein) and he should be rested for it. Frumpkin rests on his laps, and- yes. He needs this.
He closes his eyes, drifts, and dreams.
-
When consciousness pulls him from the comfort of sleep, he finds yellow eyes staring at him.
Nott keeps her gaze on him, the gaze questioning and worried like it was all those months back in the prison cell. He'd been barely alive back then, afraid, flinching at every sound, covered in bruises and dirt. And she was not much better, with bruised skin and nervous eyes that didn't leave Caleb for longer than a few minutes.
He'd sworn himself off of connections, promised to travel the lands nameless, a shadow in society that would be gone before he was noticed by anyone who might answer to one Trent Ikithon, because he'd spent so long picking up the remains of himself and he didn't want to start over again, didn't have enough pieces left to shatter and put back together, but.
She looked like she'd spent so long running and he does not know what told him, but he knew immediately. He saw the same thing in the mirror, knew the look of someone running intimately.
She walked into his life with her sorrowful eyes and bruised lip and twitching fingers and she handed him a cup of water and he took it and he didn't know he was accepting so many other things as well.
(Later that same night she asks him his name, and he says it is 'Caleb Widogast'. She tells him her name is 'Nott the Brave'. He says, 'it is nice to meet you, Nott,' and her eyes soften and perhaps everything after that is history.)
He almost opens his mouth to ask if he'd spoken in his sleep, but, ah, that is not important. He does not want to know what words or names his traitorous tongue may have said without his permission.
“Good morning, Cay-leb!” Jester says when she sees Caleb awake, preppy as always, bright and blinding as the sun. She grins at him and he finds it in himself to smile back for her. “Are you ready for another day of walking through the tunnel?”
No. Of course not. He hates it.
He smiles. Nods. Says, “are we not always ready for such an endeavor?”
His words have the effect he had in mind and she laughs before handing him some food. On instinct, he hands it over to Nott when Jester turns away, but Nott frowns at him rather than taking it.
“You have to eat,” says she, holding the ration but- hesitantly, unwillingly. Stupid, so stupid. She hands it back. “You're getting pale... I think you need a meal.”
Ah.
He does not say that it is not the hunger that is leaving him pale and nervous and weak. Instead, he accepts the meal without another word, takes a bite or two to appease her and shake off Caduceus' inspecting gaze that is always too warm, too soft, too kind for someone as broken and ragged as Caleb.
He does not like it when it shifts to worry or to disappointment. Caduceus' disappointment is a gentle chastisement but it burns and sizzles under Caleb's skin nonetheless like a thousand needles.
(When Caleb finishes recounting everything they'd discussed in the cart, he'd expected many things. An embrace is not one of those things, yet-
Yet he is too selfish to pull away, as always, and once, just once, he allows himself to indulge. He trembles like a newborn colt but Caduceus does not let him go even though he knows about the experiments and secrets and running and madness and the house that does not stop burning, burning, burning in Caleb's dreams.)
-
He does not tell the others of the burning house and the burning regret.
He cannot even hope that they might be even a fifth as accepting of his sins as Caduceus Clay, curator of broken people.
He did not mean to tell him but it spilled out.
It is a calculated risk. It has to be; gods, let it be calculated.
-
It takes another few hours before Beau gives him a look almost akin to a glare and asks, “Are you alright, man?
He answers yes.
As always.
Caleb knows that she knows he is not okay because he can see it in her eyes, the glaring disbelief and mild concern as she eyes him up and down as if searching for wounds. But she is not one to show her concern, so she shrugs and keeps walking.
9:17 o'clock.
-
“Caleb, are you okay? You look sick,” Jester says and it isn't long before her words are followed by a hand against his forehead, feeling for a temperature he knows he doesn't have. “You don't have a fever but you look reaaaaally not good.”
Caleb ducks away, doesn't speak. There are days when he has a low word limit and his mouth tastes distinctly of emptiness, and today he can feel that there are even fewer words he can say than the usual.
He's spent enough of them on telling the time, answering Beau's question, telling Nott he is okay.
He cannot spend more of them on things that are not his spells. He needs to have words ready just in case, because if he doesn't there is no telling what will happen.
(“Clever boy.”)
Jester tuts, crosses her arms, but she does not say anything. Caleb can feel her gaze heavy on him as they continue, but thank the gods, she does not say anything further.
-
They set up camp and it is much the same as the one previous. And the one before that.
A cycle. A clock going in circles endlessly.
10:58 o'clock
This time, Nott does not ask beforehand, instead settling beside him and watching him as he pulls out some books to help him silence his buzzing mind enough to sleep. As he reads, he feels his pockets grow heavy with some food that Caleb has no doubt was made by Caduceus, though he does not see Nott move. A clever trick.
“You don't have to say anything if you can't,” Nott says, “but I don't want you to go hungry.”
-
Caleb remembers a harsh winter, many winters ago, when he was but a boy. He remembers the snow that engulfed the ground and his mother's thin fingers pushing bread into his hand and telling him that he should eat to grow stronger.
'But mama,' he had said, 'what about you?'
Yet she kept pushing warm bread into his hands and giving him cups of milk fresh from the shop down the street, telling him, 'Iss auf, mein Liebes. Du musst groß werden'.
Even at the age of 9, he knew what those words meant.
The son of the Weber's had grown too hungry and his mother didn't stop crying the entire time he was being put in the ground.
Caleb knew what a 'harsh winter' means, knew what his mother wanted to avoid, had heard his mama and papa talking in low tones about needing warmer clothes and more coin to get them through the winter.
It is later that winter that he casts his first spell.
His mother is trembling so violently that worry pangs through his bones and he thinks about warm arms and warm bread. A weak mote of fire flies from his fingers and the world erupts into color and shades of red.
Suddenly he is being embraced by two people and pride colors his father's eyes as his mother slowly stops shivering so violently and their house becomes a little less icy.
–
'A gift,' she calls it.
It is many years later that he realizes his gift is a curse like all gifts are, and he howled to the moon and begged it to echo back his pain.
-
He blinks and pulls the food from his pocket. The bread turns into a small bag made of cheesecloth containing beef sausage and herb bread and munster cheese and what might have been a pastry at some point. The question is where the beef sausage is from; Caduceus was certainly not the one to make it.
“Danke,” says he in return, blinking away the image of his mother's smiling face as she handed him his food. Eins, zwei, drei...
“You did not have to give me food. But thank you, nonetheless.”
Nott smiles, a little lopsidedly. “Yeah, well, you wouldn't eat if either me or Caduceus don't force you.”
“You are probably correct.”
She is silent for a while, but it is an easy silence between them, not unlike the type of silence they shared when they were on the road for long stretches of time with nothing to do but keep walking forward. The only sound they can hear is Fjord's humming of a tune unfamiliar to Caleb as he strips off his armor.
They find similar bedding situations tonight. Caduceus sits to Caleb's left once more, eyes closed in meditation as he mentally converses with the Wildmother. Across from Caleb, Beau braids Jester's hair with a fond smile and clumsy fingers as Yasha watches on with a small smile playing on her face.
“Do you ever wonder what would have happened if we didn't meet them?”
It is a simple question. He holds a simple answer. “Yes.”
Nott's shoulders press up against his side. “Do you think we would have lasted this long?”
“Perhaps, if we were able to stay discrete and keep attention from ourselves, but... I am glad we have met them,” he says softly, so as to not bring undue attention to them.
Nott smiles, reaching out to run her fingers through Caleb's matted and tangled hair idly and it does not take long before nearly her entire body is wrapped around him. It is warm. Familiar. Something from before this mess had started.
“Yeah. Me too,” she says, and for a second everything is quiet and still and Caleb can close his eyes and pretend like they are not in some cold, grimy cave and they are not looking for Yeza and they are just as they were many fortnights ago.
Together. United.
-
Caleb sleeps and he dreams of things that do not leave him with his skin too tight and his heart beating against his chest like thunder banging against his ribs. Instead he slips into a dream about boats and two-person cons and nights spent staring up at the star-speckled sky.
The distance between them melts into familiarity and more often than not, Caleb wakes to find Nott wrapped around him in some way.
It is either that or Caduceus, really. He doesn't have much of a preference.
The days spent in the tunnel become a little easier after that.
-
3 pm
They are near to the end. Caleb can feel it in his bones. Beside him, Nott has a look of determination covering her face and Beau is holding her staff at the ready. Fjord is with Jester and Yasha, and Caduceus is to Caleb's right, spells ready to bolster the team.
This is it. His family.
Unsere Leute.
(Our people.)
At the end of everything, they stand together.
(If I go, will you go with me?
Always.)
Their enemies never stood a chance.