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seafleece · 4 years

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you know, the worst fucking thing about it is she almost doesn’t. jester almost checks in time.

—

there’s a funny swirl of sensation— she thought the hand would be cold, clammy or oily, like the hair or just otherwise filthy, the kind of hand only a desperate man would shake, the kind of hand that feels like it’s knitted together with sorrow, but it’s not. the fingers are really long, but that’s about it.

the door is opening behind her, that predictable witch-y creak, and isharnai’s grin isn’t as evil as she thought it would be. her eyes dart towards the door, and back to beau, and when jester calls to her, something curiously mundane, she sinks in this huge, satisfied exhale. like she’s done. like she’s settling in to watch.

“beau, are you done yet, we—“

isharnai lets her go and she falls backward onto the floor.

—

there’s a distant yelp, and the sound of feet. isharnai is perfectly still above her, perfectly silent, her work done.

jester’s hands cradle her face, lift her up, like she had back in the cathedral.

this will be the last time, beau thinks. tries to drink everything about it in.

jester’s eyes, big and deep and purple. her mouth opens— she’s saying something, shouting something, her hands cold and curiously shaky against her cheeks, but beau can’t hear it. so pretty, she thinks, should’ve told her again. just to say it. just to know she knows.

—

“beau? beau, what happened, what did you do—”

beau smiles at her, a loose and open thing. her mouth opens and shuts again, and the look in her eyes is so warm it almost makes her forget the sight of isharnai letting go, long fingers unwinding from beau’s wrist like threads. almost makes her forget that beau’d been gripping back.

isharnai drifts over her so smoothly, like shadows drawing forward with the sunset, and she reaches for jester’s face. there’s not much she can do to fight the pull as isharnai twists her, peering down into her face with that serpentine curve to her spine, looking somehow sleepy, sated.

she’s starting to cry, and isharnai’s eyes glitter at the sight of it. she looks between them, at jester’s tail still wound around beau’s wrist, at the way beau’s hand twitches, tries to close around it, and falls slack again.

“oh,” she says. “oh, i see.”

her long, too long, unsettlingly long thumb swipes under jester’s eye, and the shadows spread from her like long hair in water. when she lets go of jester she falls, too, and the darkness creeps up from the corners of her eyes.

—

“i have to say,” isharnai says. “i did not expect this.”

—

sitting up is like pulling herself through molasses. she clutches at her head— breathing feels like fog is pouring from her nose, her mouth.

“beau?” jester stirs from beside her— she’d been on the floor when beau had fallen asleep, she remembers, the bed was gross and she’d said something stupid about the poison not being able to hurt her, but it’s not the first time she’s gone to sleep alone and woken up to jester next to her. “what’s happenin’—?”

“i—” she says. “where are we?”

jester’s eyes are open for only a second. they don’t glow so bright as molly’s used to in the dark, but she can feel them on her face before they close again and jester pulls herself further into beau’s side. her horn digs a little at her ribs.

“we’re in the inn,” she says happily, “in kamordah.” like all is well. “we’re going to mount menteri tomorrow.”

“no, i—” she pauses. “we already did that. we were just there, i—”

“yup.” jester’s voice is muffled where her face presses into beau’s back. “you messed up, didn’t you.”

it’s not a question.

“yeah.” beau laughs, pulls a hand backward through her hair. “just like always. what’s— why are we back?”

“you’re doing what you said you would. giving it up.”

“huh.” beau lays back down. she and jester don’t fit together perfectly, like the people in jester’s books probably do. she’s a bit too small in jester’s arms, gets swallowed just so if one of them rolls in their sleep. jester’s horns wake her up sometimes, sometimes she elbows jester in the stomach and jester wakes with an oof— she sees it all happening in a blur, a montage of fond imperfection. of things to miss.

“you know, you kinda sound like isharnai.”

she falls asleep again to the sound of laughter.

—

she opens her eyes in nicodranas to the sound of water on the rocks by the chateau— she’s been wading in from further out in the ocean. on the sand, jester is standing, holding a big floppy hat down over her hair with one hand and waving furiously with the other.

it’s foggy out, but she can still see jester’s cheeks scrunched up towards her eyes with her grin, the ribbons of her dress catching the breeze. the chateau’s secret little beach is boxed in by low cliffs and crawling coast plants— everything is still except for this, the others are back inside still. asleep, or preparing breakfast. they’d left this moment for just the two of them.

they did that a lot, she thinks. even nott. there are so many of these she still has to remember, still has to wade backward through.

she makes for shore, but with each step the water drags heavier and heavier at her legs, refusing to get shallower. nugget is barking and barking— he runs out toward her, into the water, but the fog is drawing down to meet the ocean until she can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.

—

“love you, jes.”

jester’s tears bleed into her vestiges— funny, how she can feel it even with the rain.

“it’s not that i don’t believe you, you know,” she says, “but do you really believe me?”

“i—”

“it’s how you show it, too.” she squeezes tight around beau’s waist, and lets her go. “it’s whether or not you act like the other person loves you, too.”

beau turns. lightning breaks the sky at last, and the thunder rattles something deep in her chest. jester seems so far away all of a sudden, tears still rolling warm and unabashed down her face. “i’m gonna try,” she says, has to raise her voice over the storm. she’s crying, too. “i’ll try to remember.”

“me, too,” jester wraps her arms around herself, preserving. “i love you.”

the storm carries the sound of it to her, even as the sky swirls black and endless overhead.

—

“i don’t think i’m forgetting everyone else,” she says, miserably. “just you.”

they’re in the cart, and jester has her eyes closed— it’s a pretty good facsimile of sleep, she’s even remembering to breathe like it, but beau knows she’s awake, knows the inside of the cart is too familiar for her to look at. a stray tear curls into the hollow under her chin.

“it’s funny, you know. i didn’t get it until just now. why it would just be you.”

“yeah?” jester’s voice scratches with disuse, with tears from earlier.

“yeah. you were what i thought of when i said i’d give it up— i thought it was the traveling part, but it was the traveling with you part all along.”

“you should have told me.”

“yeah.”

“i’m gonna forget, too, you know.” jester opens one eye. the purple is so deep it’s almost black. “i’m forgetting right now.”

“i’m sorry.”

“we will still do it, you know. what we planned. but none of us want to. something isn’t the right way, or what was supposed to happen, just because you can survive it.”

“when’d you get so damn smart, jes?”

jester laughs— a sudden bark— if beau didn’t know better, she’d think it loud enough, harsh enough to alert everyone else, but the magic on the cart keeps it in. anchors them in this sad little nest, together still for a moment. “it’s you,” she says. “this is what you know.”

“oh.”

jester’s eye closes again. the uneven rattle of pebbles under the wheels of the cart grows smoother, less distinct, a falling away of sensation.

“dairon’s not gonna know how to braid the circlet into my hair as nice as you do, huh?”

“no.” it’s a whisper.

“i hope she doesn’t get too offended when i talk about you in my sleep while we’re traveling.”

“she already knew, i think. that night in rosohna.”

“yeah, probably. i was never too subtle, was i?”

“only for me.”

“funny how that works,” and it doesn’t feel funny at all.

—

it’s getting dizzying, faster and faster— isharnai must be bored, she thinks. so many nights of them crowded together and whispering, the next little bit of one long conversation, one they never quite finished.

she sees, for the first time, the funny look jester gives her when she sneaks back into caleb’s hut after keg leaves, wary of the magic— it had been the first night they spent in the hut, and she left them. keg was lovely— is lovely, flushing bright red when she puts her armor back on and beau stirs— but peering into her face again beau thinks that she looks an awful lot like herself. sharp-edged in strange places, snapping like the baby dragon turtles the shop in kamordah somehow got their hands on when she was little, and without someone to worry her into something softer in their embrace.

—

jester beams when beau blows her a kiss in the victory pit— “this is the first time you said you loved me!” she shouts across to beau, and beau’s grin slides off her face into something brackish and cloying at her feet.

—

jester traces the blackened veins in beau’s neck when they embrace, crushingly, on the ground in the evening nip. “i wouldn’t have done this with anyone else, you know,” she whispers.

—

they’re face to face in the shitty little trostenwald inn, heads on the same pillow. jester looks so deep into her eyes she feels pinned there like an insect; she shifts, and her hips bump sleepily into beau’s.

“you’re almost done,” she breathes, sweet and damp. “one more. what are you going to do?”

beau reaches for her hand and lets the nebulousness of the memory shift to create the sensation of jester’s grip. “my job,” she says. “i’m gonna keep working. the soul needs at least one expositor on the dynasty’s side.”

“i’m gonna be so proud of you, still,” jester whispers. tears blot the rough fabric of the pillow. “even if i don’t know it.” she shakes a little.

“yeah.” beau pulls the dreamy rendition of jester’s hand up to her mouth, presses a kiss to the cold center of her palm. “me, too.”

—

jester spins her in a dizzy, joyous circle and she tries to catch her breath, afraid to hold on since her hands are still slick with snake blood. fjord pulls his falchion out of the thing’s head— the blade is almost unrecognizable, a solid, single-edged blade with no accents, no golden tinge. he can’t even un-summon it, has to sheathe it like a regular mercenary and everything.

she wants to laugh, but there’s this sick, rotten feeling in her chest. the death of something final.

“jester,” she says. “can you help me do something?”

“sure,” jester says, voice too serious for the smile on her face.

—

they kneel right there in the mud— the farmer hasn’t even come to check on them yet, and fjord just stands there next to the snake’s body, looking on.

jester folds her hands around beau’s.

“okay,” she whispers. “no promises, but he’s listening.”

she’s quiet for a few seconds.

“uh, hey. traveler. the traveler? whatever jester calls you—” she scratches the back of her neck, the unadorned back of her neck.

“i don’t know if you can even answer prayers— jester says you’re a god, though, so— but anyway. i’m scared. for me and her, and i get if you don’t care about me, but i don’t think she wants to forget me either.”

she screws her eyes further shut. “no, fuck— i know she doesn’t want to forget me, because that’s not what people who love each other want, i know— i just. if there’s anything you can do, if you can save anything, can you at least try? i want to see her again, even if i think it’s for the first time. please.”

jester squeezes her hands. “okay.”

“okay.”

“are you ready?” she opens her eyes and jester’s looking at her like she did on the floor of isharnai’s, watery and afraid and raw.

“no,” her voice is like a kick of gravel, like the backwards sandpapery drag of frumpkin’s tongue. “i’m so sorry.”

jester lets her hands go. “i know.”

and beau falls back, again, spread-eagled in the mud. the morning mist swirls heavy and fathomless overhead, and on the other side of her next blink is dairon’s face, huge and worried.

—

she turns the sending stone over in one hand and strolls off the plank, head on a swivel.

“hey, just made anchor. i’ll check back in when this stupid thing reloads, but i’m gonna take your advice and do some sight-seeing. we’ve earned it, right?”

the first thing she hears is dairon’s sigh. “beauregard, it cut out again. you have to count, remember? anyway, that’s a good idea. if i were you, i’d check out the, uh, the—” the message cuts out, and she huffs out a laugh.

then there’s a weird scuffly sound and dairon’s voice comes back. “sorry, had to steal someone’s— it’s the lavish chateau, beau, the lavish chateau. you should really go there first. like, today.”

“uh, okay?” she waits a few seconds to let the spell end, so she can mutter only to herself instead. “lavish chateau, huh, sounds kinda—”

and then this funny thing happens— it’s like getting kicked right in the solar plexus, the first place dairon taught her to stun someone. she almost pitches forward off the deck and into the shallow water of the quay.

something blurs behind her eyes— a whirl of color, the sound of the ocean, a woman singing, a room covered wall to wall in children’s scribbles. it’s like in her dreams— everything is tinged green, just so, and she just sits right down when it ends, lets her boots dip into the water.

—

the lavish chateau looks a little different than she expects— blue, almost the same color as the sky, and there are no guards out front. she stands there with the map clutched in her hands, feeling the odd need to hold tight to something, and a figure ducks out of the front doorway, leaning down to avoid hitting his head and straightening up.

there’s a long second where he and beau just look at each other, and then—

“caduceus,” she breathes, and goes running.

—

caduceus doesn’t run, but he spreads his arms out wide— still wearing that shirt with the one stupid sleeve, she sees— and lets her bull up into him.

he’s stronger than she remembers, grunts and manages to lift her off her feet, and his laugh rumbles, honey-warm, in her ear.

“beau,” he says. just “beau.”

—

he tows her inside under his arm, her head ducked low and sheepish, and she’s barely back through the door when they all swarm her.

everyone’s hair is so long— they all seem to have the same funny little crown braided into it. everyone except caleb and nott takes a turn crushing her half to death, though for their part they try their best.

“we have not seen you since the ceremony, beauregard,” caleb says. “you should have told us you were coming!”

“yeah, well,” she scratches at her neck, uses the buzz that touching the tattoo always gives her to center herself. “no magic, remember?”

“lousy excuse.” fjord elbows her. “like the soul doesn’t have a million people who could do it for you.”

“i, uh, didn’t know you guys would be here.” which is true, why the chains of tharizdun are milling around in the lobby of the menagerie coast’s most famous courtesan, she can’t quite fathom, imagines it’s for something stupid. “i’m just being a tourist, y’know? never been here before.”

everyone stops talking at once. caleb’s face sinks into its old scowl, and they sort of all collectively sink into their chairs at the first big table.

the synchronicity of it hurts— she used to feel it, too, but it’s her own damn fault, right? she gave it up. nott looks fucking stunning, though— halfling and happy and resplendent, resplendent as a dress stitched full of buttons can possibly be. she’d do it again, maybe not in a heartbeat, but again all the same.

“ah,” caleb says, suddenly gravelly. “yes.”

“hey,” she panics a little. “it’s okay, i’m here now, right?”

they exchange looks— simultaneous, again, and she aches to trade expressions in kind. to be on the same page.

“beau,” caduceus stands, puts a massive hand on her shoulder. “i think you should see the beach.”

“what? i’ve seen the beach before. i still remember being here with you guys, you know—”

“the chateau has a private beach,” fjord says. “it’s really something special. why don’t you check it out, and we can catch up when you get back?”

“uh—”

“i’ll come with you,” yasha says, and stands. “i would like to see this as well.”

“okay?” it does sound nice, a walk on the beach with yasha. they never really got around to talking, beau thinks, after they got yasha back, just sort of danced around each other. broken people broken differently, magnetized towards each other a little but never enough.

“let’s go.”

yasha links her arm in beau’s and near-marches her down the hall, to the little back door.

—

it’s weirdly foggy when they step outside— the sun doesn’t usually take long to burn off the morning sea chill, but it’s still early, she supposes.

they walk in silence, not uncomfortable but not especially calm. there’s this weird anticipatory buzz she can feel from yasha that’s passing into her.

the path is laid with this colorful little stones, flat pieces of sea glass. it’s almost childish— not in the bad way, just something she wouldn’t expect from a place like this. it reminds her of the path into a family’s backyard garden, something a child would walk with wonder.

she has the image of a little girl running, full-tilt down to the water. she’s seen portraits of the ruby of the sea, and there’s a familiar curl to the girl’s horns, the heart-shape of the tail.

“here,” yasha says, and the vision is banished. the fog is thicker still here, clinging to the sand and spreading out across the water.

there’s a dim shadow a ways away, and wouldn’t you know it, beau’s heart starts in this messy gallop that steals her breath. “i—”

she has the vague sensation of yasha pushing her forward, and she half-runs down to the water on fawn legs, suddenly wobbly.

the fog feels thicker, and thicker, until suddenly it clears.

and she’s there.

heaving with breath, the little bells dangling from her horns jingling. cheeks flushed purple almost deep enough to match her eyes.

the fog is pushed out from behind beau in this impossibly strong rush of wind, and when she closes her eyes it’s like all her dreams superimposed.

crowding together on a narrow inn bed, blowing kisses, trading i love you in the rain, tearing out onto this same beach in ribbony dresses, waking up with the slick crunching of broken glass in the belly of a cathedral and hands on her face. lying on the floor of isharnai’s hut, limbs heavy with misery and magic.

jester rushes into her like the tide, none too gentle, fully bowling her back over into the sand. before her body warms with the returned memories, before her hands can reach for jester’s face, jester’s mouth is on hers.

it’s not a particularly skillful thing— their teeth jar for a moment, and they’re both still out of breath, but the first desperate second passes and then jester’s arms slide around her waist and she sighs happily and it’s perfect, really, just perfect.

distantly, she can hear barking— nugget recognizing her, no doubt— and the crash of the waves on the chateau’s private beach, but everything beyond this feels as far and unimportant as the fog.

i remember you, she thinks, i remember i remember, i love you i love you i love you, and jester’s tears run into their kiss and they break apart so she can say it for real, so she can clear her head just enough to hear jester saying it, too.

#i'm SOFT #listen it is 7:30 am #i have been writing this for three hours #but it's WORTH IT #i even made a playlist for this #my writing #critical role #beaujester #beauregard lionett #jester lavorre #the mighty nein #isharnai #misery loves company #long post #based on a) me yelling at fiovske in messages at like 3 am #and b) eternal sunshine of the spotless mind

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