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“What the fuck , Caleb?!”
Jester’s voice ricochets through his head, careening straight through the lingering traces of the charm spell’s haze. It’s an octave higher than normal, he notes absentmindedly. She’s scared; she’s angry .
Why shouldn’t she be? He’d almost killed her. He’d almost killed them all.
Time may have passed, their mission may have been honorable, but some facts did not change. Caleb was a murderer at heart, calculating and cruel. He had flung a fireball at his friends and felt nothing but satisfaction at his own accuracy. Watched as they charred, one after the other, remorselessly throwing up a wall of flame, flinging firebolts, holding steadfast against the crushing waves Fjord conjured. This was his element, and he held the power. It had been so long, and the sultry voice in his ear had not hesitated to pry at this pleasure.
Think of what you could do , it whispers, if only you let go of that weak mask you wear. These people aren’t your friends. Look, they fight you now, do they not? You are their strongest and they have betrayed you.
You can take the man from the training, but you cannot take the training from the man.
It had been easy, really. Paltry. What would have been mere practice from Master Ikithon. When his friends cry out, he hears his old name over the roars of the fire. Foreign, now, but not lost. Bren , they yell, but their accents are Zemnian. Six voices intertwine, overlap, separate, until there are only two, thick with the intonation of Empire birth.
Beau grasps at him, a sharp stroke of blue against the dull cavern walls, and asks him is this is the day she must kill him. He doesn’t have his tongue or wits about him, but if he did, he would have called her Eodwulf, and teased that he never needed saving.
It had all happened again. The charm, the fire, the charred bodies of people he cared about lying at his feet. The astounding simplicity of such a trick brings hot shame to his cheeks. Had he not been able to break through the spell--
“He- she- they got in my head,” he stutters, though no one listens. His voice quiets further, still. “I am sorry.”
He didn’t get the luxury of saying such kind things to his parents before collapsing his childhood home down on top of them, so he will say them now. He is half broken man, half murderous machine, and does not expect anyone to forgive him.
Yet something about Jester’s tone makes him want to repent like this. Openly, honestly, on his knees if that’s what’s required. Of all people, she was the last one he ever wanted to see him as a monster. This wish is selfish, but if she loses her faith in him, if a woman as kind and compassionate as she cannot find heart to disregard his transgressions, then all of his nightmares are true. He is just as bad as he believes. Caleb Widogast is the same man as Bren Aldric Ermendrud, after all.
But there is not time to dwell. A fiend is clawing through the walls, and ethereal creatures lurk in the shadows. He will fight this moment, as he was trained to do. Later, he will grieve for the man he used to be.
…
The creatures do not go gently.
Caleb falls unconscious no less than four times; he is beaten and beaten, by fiends, by friends. Caduceus dies, a miracle brings him back.
Or, no, not a miracle. It’s Jester, in an explosion of diamond shards, a single prayer tumbling from her lips. Had the scene not been so slicked with demon blood, so achingly similar to that fateful mid afternoon on the outskirts of Shady Creek Run, he would have been awed by the beauty of it. The shards reflect precise squares of light back onto her blue skin, and he takes to studying them until he hears a laborious intake of breath from their fallen friend.
Caduceus Clay lives another day. They all do. It is the first time Caleb believes the fates may have greater plans for them.
Perhaps it is this emboldening thought that keeps him awake well after everyone drifts off into a deep sleep within the confines of his hut. Everyone, that is, except for Jester.
But he knew this. She rarely sleeps so easily after harrowing battles. Close calls do not fit her jovial narrative, sharp and jarring to the story she has playing out in her head; one she began concocting when she was painstakingly safe within the walls of The Lavish Chateau.
Caleb sits against the dome of the hut, listening to Jester’s stuttered breathing for a long time. He counts the minutes until they clock into hours, as though the numbers will supply him what he lacks in courage. Her head rests barely a breath from his hip bone, her body sprawled out to his right. He owes her so much. An explanation, first of all.
“Jester,” he whispers. It’s so quiet in the hut, he expects the stillness to split open at his exhale of her name, but no one stirs, not even she.
“Oh,” she breathes. “You’re awake, too?”
“Uh, yes. I am… sorry. For today. Well, yesterday, really, but all the same. I would never wish to hurt you, any of you. I do… well, I am... fond of this group we’ve formed, you could say.”
Jester giggles lightly and turns to lay on her stomach. Her chin now rests on his thigh, looking up at him with wide blue eyes. As if it were nothing, and they’d done this a thousand times before. Caleb cannot decide if this is a greater comfort or a source of more anxiety.
“Caleb, you do like us!” She grins, her forked tongue sliding between her teeth playfully. When he smiles back sadly, her tone shifts and she pulls herself closer to him. “It is really not your fault. Those things got Yasha, too. And don’t get me wrong, you guys were totally badass, but you weren’t you, you know? That’s not you and I know it.”
The silence returns for a moment. She makes it sound so simple, Caleb almost just lets himself be convinced. He can feel the steady beat of her pulse, the soft skin where her chin meets her neck, dutifully thumping against his leg. He wants it to be that easy. For her, if nothing else. But it is not.
“I should not have been so easily persuaded.”
“Well,” she drawls. “It’s not every day you’re seduced by a crazy succubus. And that was pretty crazy, right? You do not have to worry, Caleb. It won’t happen again. We’ll be ready, and I’ll protect you!”
“It’s happened before.” It tumbles out of him, more clipped than he means for it to be.
That stops her in her tracks. Her mouth puckers and her brows furrow. “What?”
“I’ve been… seduced. Charmed. Into hurting people I love. Cruelly.” He looks her directly in the eye, challenging her to hate him, to move from this intimate position she’s made her space in. He wants to see the moment she realizes he is not what he says he is. That he’s a monster, instead. “My family. Mutter und Vater .”
Some horrible realization dawns in her eyes, her lips part, but she doesn’t move. “That’s why- fire… it causes you to shut down sometimes. That’s why. Why you use it even when you hate it.”
He nods. She doesn’t move.
He is deserving of her apall, her disgust. She cherishes her mother as the woman deserves. All his mother had ever done was love, and his repayment had been to see her turned to ash.
“Well, tell me,” she says, instead of the horrible things he’d wished for. “Tell me about them. Their story, your story.”
“I’m so sorry.” As though repeating it is going to fix everything.
He watches her swallow her own tears as she dutifully takes his hand in her own. “I know. You don’t have to lie anymore, I swear it. The person you are now, he’s different. You’re Caleb , that’s not going to change. I like it more than Bren anyway, it sounds heroic, wouldn’t you agree?”
The corners of his mouth pull upward, the slightest bit, in astonishment. He cocks his head at her, brows pulled together. She doesn’t even know the extent of his crimes, and she forgives him. Why , he breathes, afraid that if he raises his voice this moment will shatter like the diamond over Caduceus’s body.
She smiles. “You’re Caleb,” she repeats, as though it is obvious. “There’s just a few blanks to fill in, you see?”
Something unspools in Caleb’s chest. Something tight, loosening its vicious hold on his heavy heart. There is still grief there, the knowledge of what he could have done today is not a light burden, but Jester is here, holding his hand, ready to listen. The days ahead are unclear, and they are both very far from home, but they find a certain security in each other, in this little infinite moment.
The fates know they won’t get many.
Caleb breathes, and starts from the beginning.