#caleb widogast! i watched this whole thing just because he seemed like he was made just for me! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

saphirered · 3 years

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First times reader x Caleb widogast?

Here you go I hope you like these ☺️

The first time you met Caleb you were making some coin on the side as a temporary barkeep at the Lavish Chateau gathering funds to book passage on a ship when they entered. You paid little mind to this curious bunch but couldn’t help keep staring at the redheaded man in fine clothes. There was something… different about him. He caught you staring and you hoped the earth would swallow you whole then and there to spare you the embarrassment. Carlos, your boss didn’t help and even made you serve them. The redheaded man kept his eyes on you probably put off by the weirdo that couldn’t keep their eyes off him. You’d never hear the end of this. And though you were soon to see through his illusions it did not change your opinion. Little did you know meeting this intriguing man, Caleb Widogast would bring trouble to your life to the point you were on the run from the law. Should you be upset? Angry? Maybe but perhaps you should have worded it more carefully when you said you needed passage on a ship…

The first time you spend time alone together the Mighty Nein dragged you in pirate trouble a plenty finding yourselves on a true pirate ship as a guests… More like prisoners and you knew better than to not be on guard. You slept with one eye open and a dagger under your pillow. Caleb seemed to feel the same, well save for the dagger part which left you both awake at the same time more often than not. You had some heart to hearts or at least as much as you both could muster. Speaking the truth without revealing anything of worth seemed to be a talent you both possessed but over time you grew more comfortable around each other. There was an undeniable chemistry between the two of you. Kindred souls destined for each other as Jester called it gushing over how you two would be perfect for each other but neither of you were ready for something beyond friendship. It was that first open and unfiltered conversation that kicked all of this off.

You tagged along with the Nein after their return to the mainland having grown accustomed to their company. You wouldn’t call yourself part of their group but you liked their company so you’ll stay until they grow sick of you or until your path takes you a in a different direction. On the road it was time to take watch. You were usually on duty with either Yasha when she was present or Caduceus but that night the Firbolg really deserved a full night of uninterrupted sleep so you and Caleb took watch together. It was cold and you were freezing. Even Caleb had trouble keeping warm so you suggested what you were taught; sticking close together wrapped up in your blankets and sleeping bag with a Frumpkin spread out over both your laps. You had to admit that this arrangement worked quite favourable for all parties involved so it became a more frequent occurrence.

The first time you danced together came as a surprise to you. You were celebrating in a tavern after successfully completing a job for the Bright Queen and Caleb may have had a little bit too much of that Xhorhassian ale. A band was playing an upbeat tone and before you knew it Caleb had pulled you off your seat and began spinning you around. You were caught off guard but apparently a drunk Caleb was a more open Caleb and you were all having fun so what’s the harm? He was quite a good dance partner even when intoxicated. You could only imagine what waltzes he could dance when sober.

The first time you shared a bed together came as the aftermath of the drunken dances. With the Nein save for Jester, Caduceus and yourself were quite a few bottles in resulting in you three having to practically carry them to their beds and Caleb had already been sticking to your side like glue so you were hardly going to hand him over to the others. Besides, you were able to convince him that last glass was enough and maybe it would be best for him to switch to water instead so maybe you could convince him to sleep too. You helped him up the stairs his arm over your shoulder to support him as he kept humming the tune of the band whispering sweet nothings in your ear making comments about your eyes, your personality, your skills in battle but you took it as the words of a drunken man and just happily agreed with him. You didn’t mind after all. Eventually you got him to his room but getting him in his bed proved more difficult than expected to the point where he lost his balance and you fell with him and before you knew it you were stuck in his embrace with him leaning on you like you were his pillow. Telling him he’d probably sleep more comfortable on his own was met with disagreements. You apparently were much more comfortable than any pillow and blanket and he wanted you to stay. So you stayed making yourself more comfortable.

The hangover morning got Caleb all flustered. Hundreds of apologies, him scrambling up awkwardly but eventually he did catch on you didn’t mind and he couldn’t deny he probably hadn’t slept so comfortable in a long time even if he did wake up with a killer headache. The rest of the day was spent in with a breakfast in bed and a hangover cure brew from your Firbolg Cleric friend. Though that didn’t take it away in its entirety so the two of you spent the rest of the morning and afternoon cuddled up together.

Cuddles are comfy and even though Caleb might be somewhat touch repulsed he loved your hugs and spending time in your embrace whenever he felt down, conflicted, was simply yearning for physical touch or no reason at all. You were happy to provide these cuddles whenever he needed them and he happily provided you whenever you needed them.

Over time Caleb grew more comfortable with your touch and you with his resulting in the two of you sitting closer together and holding hands when no one noticed. You’d grown quite fond of each other and eventually had a conversation to figure out what this thing you have going exactly is and where you would place boundaries. Together you adjusted these boundaries many times to better fit your dynamic as it kept evolving but it took some comments from Beau about how the two of you were acting like ‘that couple’ and to ‘bone each other already’ that made you realise you were very much behaving like you were in a relationship so you thought why not? You were both comfortable with this so why couldn't you be? You had nothing to lose.

Your first kiss wasn’t the most romantic by Jester’s standards that is at least. No fireworks overhead or grand confessions of love. You were sitting together at the Xhorhaus looking over the city from the ostentatious tree on top of the house arms wrapped around each other in a comfortable embrace. You were the one to ask him not wanting to cross any boundaries as you both decided moving things slow was the way to go but he said yes. Your first kiss with Caleb was soft and sweet and everything you had hoped to be. It wasn’t grand and soppy like the kisses described in Tusk Love but romantic in your own way as neither of you were for the over the top expressions of love and affection.

You’d been helping Caleb figure out a particularly difficult spell. Your eye for detail being exactly what he needed after weeks of trying and just not getting it right but you managed to crack the code, find the mistake and help him fix it. He lifted you and spun you around giving you a deep kiss. “I love you.” The sentence seemed to have slipped out but was genuine nonetheless so you kissed him back with an ‘I love you too’. From then on you both grew more accustomed to saying the words out loud and eventually even in the company of others which for the first couple times was met with gagging noises from Beau.

The first time you finally addressed the elephant in the room about the two of you officially being in a relationship left Jester gushing over the two of you already halfway through writing an epic romance about the two of you. ‘The Barkeep and the Scholar’. ‘Drinks and Disasters’. She kept sputtering ridiculous names. Caduceus was happy the two of you finally opened up about your relationship as there was no hiding from him. Fjord and Yasha were happy for the both of you. Beau of course congratulated Caleb and bluntly told you she wouldn’t be afraid to make you disappear should you ever hurt Caleb but it was Veth who’s promised you bodily harm and worse if you ever hurt her boy because not even the gods could stop her if that happened. You had to assure her, vow upon your life that that day would never come and you loved Caleb too much to ever hurt him let alone to the point were you’d provoke Veth’s wrath.

#critical role x reader #mighty nein x reader #caleb widogast x reader #caleb widogast #caleb-widogast-x-reader

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violet-t-9 · 3 years

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My take on why Caleb doesn’t trust Astrid and Eadwulf

Why does Caleb not trust Astrid even though she helped the M9 multiple times by now and let them leave? Well, Liam has always kept good track of what happened in previous episodes of the campaign and I believe Caleb was drawing information from all his previous encounters with Astrid and Eadwulf, so here is just some highlights on what they know about them so far. This is another long post. Again, all quotes are not exact and straight from my memory. This is just my biased personal interpretations so take it as you will.

To illustrate my points, I recommend that you watch the Narrative Telephone episode Widogast’s Web of Words. It described the three of them this way:

1. Eadwulf as the boy whose mind was eaten, and he had “no mind of his own”.

2. Astrid as the girl whose eye was cut out, and she “never saw true again”.

3. Caleb as the boy whose heart was swallowed he “never knew love again”.

1. Eadwulf: From all the interactions we have seen with Eadwulf in it, he always appeared to defer to Astrid/Trent and this very much reminded me of the “no mind of his own” aspect. He “looks to Astrid” for what to do for multiple situations, and is clearly pretty content to be a follower. Otherwise, Eadwulf didn’t get to interact with Caleb a lot in general so to Caleb he must still be kind of an enigma. Whenever Eadwulf did answer Caleb’s questions he seemed like he was pretty content in his role as a Volstrucker as well and was pretty nonchalant about his job (basically talking about it like a summer job and very casually) without showing any hesitancy about what he does/carrying out his missions. His apparent association with the Raven Queen fascinates me and I don’t think Caleb knows what to make of that either. So far from what we’ve seen, Eadwulf clearly still cares about Caleb but also has lost some capacity to think for himself due to the trauma and abuse he suffered. This may also be why Eadwulf could be harder to reach than Astrid in a sense. So far, he has not given any indicator that he doesn’t believe in Trent’s system.

2. Astrid: “never saw true again” gave me the impression of her being “blind” to what is actually right and the true nature of Trent’s system, and given the evidence so far Caleb is right to think she is still buying into Trent’s ideology. When Caleb went to Astrid’s house to talk with her, she apologized and Caleb made a very high insight check. Astrid was “genuinely mournful for his pain” but there is also something “hardened” in her that was more like a “I’m sorry that you have suffered, as many people have, life is suffering and sometimes it is necessary”. Clearly, she on some level believe that what they are doing as Volstruckers to be the right thing. She said she felt guilty about her actions sometimes, but did believe that they were making a necessary sacrifice to protect the rest of the empire. Caleb even remarked that “he blinded you”. Basically, Astrid thought that Trent’s system and ideology is a necessary evil that is ultimately good for the empire because the Volstrucker does hard things so civilians can be safe. However, there is doubt in her, especially since Caleb continued to try to reach her. She made a remark at the dinner episode, something like “what we did was for the greater good... right?” and she sounded uncertain. I do think changing her mind would be easier and she may have started to see the flaw in Trent’s system already. As of right now though, Astrid seems to be already training other Volstruckers (I could be wrong, but she mentioned “tutelage”) and Caleb/Liam’s comment about her buying into the system is clearly not mistaken based on what we have seen from her so far.

She is also ambitious in a sense that she wants to replace Trent, and she keeps reminding Caleb of that (”race you to the top”, “he is just an old man...”, “it could be an opportunity if you struck first”). She sees Caleb as an opportunity (I think Matt confirmed something about it or about her ambition when the Traveler was analyzing Astrid but can’t quite remember). She clearly doesn’t like Trent, and wants Trent gone, but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t believe in Trent’s system (all evidence suggests she does still buy into it). She also likely wants to use Caleb to further her own goals, and like Fjord said “not in an evil way” but that Caleb defying Trent would be very beneficial/convenient for her own goals. She clearly still cares about Caleb a lot and is happy to see him again, and like I said, this doesn’t mean she is trustworthy. Caleb’s concern is mostly what Astrid would do if she does replace Trent and he is right to assume things wouldn’t change much given Astrid’s belief in the system right now (her mindset of “Volstruckers are necessary and they do the dirty work so the empire can thrive”). Her helping M9 doesn’t really cancel out her ideology, it just shows that she genuinely cares for Caleb. Furthermore, so far Caleb’s presence is good for her goals. We don’t really know what she would do if Caleb appears more a threat than a benefit to her ambitions one day.

So far, Caleb is the first one to break away from Volstruckers and I do think that gives Astrid hope that Trent can be taken down, but she could very well want to keep the program around if she ever gets in charge after Trent. She is very much dangerous, ambitious, conflicted and fascinating. Her caring for Caleb is clearly not all of her character, she has her own plots and I love her for it (thanks Liam for developing this character) and I love how Matt portrays her.

3. Caleb: another reason why Caleb may not trust his “old friends” is that his heart has very much been broken. “He never knew love again” is an apt description. This is more just interpretation from my part, but I think Caleb has partially lost his ability to trust others and he doesn’t trust anyone outside the M9, his immediate found family and their extended families (it took him a LONG time to trust them as well). Honestly? He is for the most part right to not trust people so far (exhibit A: Essek reveal) and all his paranoia from early episodes have come true, so I would not be surprised that this one does as well. [I wanted to use Yussa as a counter argument for trusting people then I remembered they trusted him with the knowledge of Aeor and he proceeded to yeet himself into the astral sea in 48 hours (the poor man).]

So yeah, reason 3 is that Caleb is just not a very trusting individual in general. He has expressed that he loved Astrid and Eadwulf, but that feeling has of course faded after more than a decade of not seeing them. He does still care for the both of them, but he does not - and should not - trust them to want to reform the Volstrucker system and change the Empire the way that Caleb wants it changed.

Now there is clearly still hope that Eadwulf and Astrid can change their mind, especially if Caleb keeps reaching out. Astrid has already shown some hesitancy and reconsideration. They also both helped the M9. I do believe that it is possible for them to eventually see Trent’s system as it is, and they have the capacity to change for the better. Right now though? Yeah, they are still pretty much buying into Trent’s system as far as I can tell. Helping M9, caring for Caleb and wanting Trent dead are separate issues and have nothing to do with what they believe in ideology-wise. I really hope that Caleb does make it back and gets to try reaching out to them again after the whole city thing is dealt with. I am very excited to see where both of these characters will go. They are very complex and fun to think about.

#caleb widogast #eadwulf #astrid beck #critical role #cr spoilers #cr discourse #campaign 2 #the mighty nein #narrative telephone

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sockablock · 4 years

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Chapter 4: Just a Parlor Trick

“—and this is your room! Or it will be, soon, once we get your stuff moved in.”

A blur of curls flew past Nott and dove headfirst onto the bare mattress. Two-feet-two of little halfling boy sprung up, danced around in a circle, and surveyed his new kingdom by bouncing on the bed.

It was—as Nott would be the first to admit—pretty bare at the moment. Caleb had already taken all of his belongings, but there hadn’t been that much to begin with. Aside from the bed-now-turned-trampoline, there was just an oak wardrobe, and a rug. The only other fixture of note was the window, framed by thin blue drapes, currently open and letting in the sea breeze.

“What do you think, Luc?” Yeza grinned from the doorframe. “How do you like it?”

“The ocean is so cool!” Luc’s hair flew around in a storm as he jumped. “And the people—there’s so many people, Dad! That big turtle at the restaurant—his back had a pipe in it!”

Nott felt the ghost of a touch on her arm. When she caught Yeza’s tentative expression, she forced herself to relax into it.

The illusion had held so far, hadn’t it? And besides, her husband already knew the truth.

“It’s okay,” she said quietly. “It’s okay. I’m okay.” Then she gave her son a smile. “And what do you think about the house, sweetie? Do you like your room?”

Luc, mid-air, gave this some thought.

“It’s smaller than my old room,” he said. “The window is bigger. Can I put my pictures up?”

There was a box of posters somewhere in the moving van. Apparently, some time in the last three years, Luc had gotten incredibly invested in a semi-popular cartoon series featuring a team of adventurers who solved mysteries in the Marrow Valley. Yeza had told her during one of their rare reunions that the clerk at the store was all but giving them away; something about increasing promotional awareness.

“Of course you can put your pictures up, Luc.”

He beamed a freckled, toothy smile.

“I like it, Mom! Can I put them up now?”

— — —

Jester hummed cheerfully to herself as she made her way through the streets of Nicodranas.

The novelty of such an act was not lost on her, and not just because she’d spent most of her life indoors—the last time she’d hurried down a road like this, it’d been under much less enjoyable circumstances.

But Jester had more tricks up her sleeves these days, and skipping between street merchants and bustling crowds, weaving through the Opal Archways in the middle of rush hour, she was certain she could hide from any watching eyes.

She squeezed the picnic basket in her arms, packed tight with the best pastries money could buy. She’d keep an eye out, too, for that little sidewalk café that did the strawberry-mango drinks Momma liked, though Jester suspected that her mother was just feigning enthusiasm to get her to eat more fruit.

The stoplight above flickered twice, then turned green. She looked both ways, then skipped across the street.

Maybe she should make a stop for sandwiches. And flowers, while she was at it—and over there, a book sale! Now that Jester was finally back home, with the Chateau such an easy walk from her apartment, every weekend she did her best to bring the whole city to her mother’s boudoir.

Not that—and here she giggled at the thought—Momma needed any help there.

The Ruby of the Sea was busy, after all. Just not too busy for her little sapphire.

— — —

The thing was, Essek’s mother was busy.

She was always busy, and with good reason at that; for longer than Essek had even been alive—and how much longer before that, gods knew—Deirta Thelyss had been the Umavi of Den Thelyss, and therefore a permanent and immovable fixture in the intricate political dance of the Kryn Dynasty.

In another life, perhaps, Essek might have followed in her footsteps and joined her in running the country—though, if she got her way, there was a good chance that he ultimately would. But, as the Dynasty and Empire so far had managed to maintain a tenuous hold on peace, currently there was little need for a person of Essek’s particular talents.

The irony of that statement occasionally made him want to laugh, though he didn’t much feel like laughing now. It had taken a considerable amount of willpower to even drag him over to his desk, and there he sat with his forehead to the surface, lamenting that going back to bed hadn’t solved his problems.

Why was Mother bothering to attend the upcoming Clovis Concord Gala? Not a single one of these coastal cities was closely allied with the Dynasty, and the sheer geographical distance between them made the two nations vaguely aware of each other at best. In fact, Essek had chosen Nicodranas specifically because of how little the Bright Queen cared about it.

Which meant the unavoidable fact of the matter was that Mother was coming just for him.

The wood of his desk was cold on his head. If she were here now, she’d tell him to sit up.

Actually, she’d probably say much more than that. If Verin was telling the truth—and his brother had always been on his side when it came to Mother— fending off another round of her attempts to force him home would only be half the struggle.

He kicked his chair back and listened to the way his wheels slid across the floor. Distantly, he could just make out some muted shuffling coming from the kitchen, and he had to remind himself that it was probably not a burglar, but Caleb.

Today was his second day in the apartment, and the man would probably need a few days to settle in. Though, Essek noted with a hint of satisfaction, Caleb seemed like a very efficient person. He’d actually…quite enjoyed their negotiation last night, despite how long it ended up being. For just a few hours his fear of an impending maternal maelstrom had been staved off by the way Widogast sometimes quirked his eyebrow while he was reading, or by the way he’d gently tap the clip of his borrowed pen with his thumb…

Essek had let him keep it, afterwards. He hadn’t even considered doing otherwise.

And as that thought crossed his mind, his restful silence was shattered by a crash.

— — —

“Knock-knock, Momma!”

“Ah, Jester! Come in! Close the door behind—oh, bother.”

This was immediately followed with the sound of air snapping to fill a void, then another minor explosion accented by four scrabbling paws.

“Nugget! Oh, Nuggy, I’ve missed you so much—”

Marion Lavore hiked up her skirts and gently side-stepped the slobber on the floor. She made her way back to her chaise lounge just a moment after Jester peeled herself from the dog.

“He’s getting quite big,” her mother said, artfully removing the exhaustion from her tone. But two decades of living under Momma’s roof gave Jester all the hint that she needed.

“Oh, I want to take him back, I really do, but the apartment doesn’t let us have dogs.” Jester sank into a plush sofa with Nugget wagging his tail at her heels. He put his head in her lap and drooled.

“And…your luck with finding a…a new apartment?”

“We’ve all been busy, Momma,” Jester sighed. “Beau is working all day long to set up a new library by the Quay, and Yasha disappears all the time even though she’s…feeling better now. I think it’ll be a while until everything’s calmed down and we can look.”

Marion pointedly did not think about the many curtains that Nugget had already eaten in three months.

“Ah, well. I understand. And how are you doing, my sweet?”

Jester giggled. “I’m doing good! I’ve been drawing and painting a lot by the sea, and keeping busy with other arts and crafts. Did you know people on the Internet will buy dozens of tiny clay dick statues? The Traveler thought it was very funny.”

Her mother’s expression was an ocean of calm. “Oh, is that…is that so? Well, I’m glad to hear you’re finding ways to…spend your day.”

“I brought some to show you!”

“Oh, how...lovely…”

“Some paintings, Momma.” Jester set aside the picnic basket and fished around in her knapsack. The bag was a horrifically pink mess of burlap and loud, jangly pins. Jester had to shove aside quite a few rolls of brushes and capped paints as she searched.

Marion watched her work with interest. “Well, even if you had brought a…the statue, I would—oh, Jester. It’s beautiful!”

Jester beamed as her mother took the canvas, gingerly like it was—and it was—fine art.

In her hands, a stunning landscape of the sea beside Nicodranas at dawn, pale pink light glancing off the tide and a thin breath of sun just above the water.

“It’s for you, Momma!”

“Oh, Jester, I couldn’t possibly—”

“Take it.” She laughed. “I have lots more at home, but this one’s my favorite so you should have it.”

Decades of living with a burgeoning artist had taught Marion not to hug the piece to her chest, though she quite wanted to.

“I’ll hang it up, then. In a place of honor,” she said seriously. “Maybe heading up the stairs? The light there is lovely, and that way I know the most important people will get to see it.”

Jester’s smile could have swallowed up the world. “Thanks, Momma.”

“No, thank you, my sweet. Now, come. What else have you been doing? What’s new and exciting with your…what did you call yourselves? The Mighty Nein?”

Jester helped her mother lay out a feast’s worth of pastries across the coffee table. Nugget eyed the bounty like a lit fuse until Jester also produced a chewing bone, which he gleefully snapped up and began to gnaw.

“I wanted to make sure we didn’t have a repeat of last time, so I stopped by a pet store,” she explained, munching on a strawberry tart. “And we’re all doing good! Caleb’s move went well, and Nott’s family just landed.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” her mother said. “You know, it would not have been a problem for them to stay with me. At least while they got settled.”

“I know, I know, but I think since she already had a place, she wanted them there, you know? And anyway, she said she didn’t want to impose.”

“Of course,” Marion nodded. “And perhaps the Chateau is…it would be a bit unconventional for a family to stay here, hm?”

“We did it!”

“We did, but we are an unconventional family.”

Jester laughed, then brushed a few crumbs off her skirt. “What have you been doing lately, Momma? Any news? Any interesting clients?” She waggled her eyebrows for emphasis.

“Well,” her mother smiled faintly, “actually, I…might have something interesting to tell you. I was, ah…well, I was invited to a party. To sing, but also as a guest.”

“What?!” Jester threw her hands in the air. “Oh, Momma, that’s amazing!”

“I, ah…might decline.”

Jester’s elation vanished instantly. “Oh, Momma. Is it…the outside…?”

Marion shrugged. It was a decidedly unrefined gesture, and left a little crinkle in her robe. “I’m just…well, you know I’ve made a little progress since you got back, but…I don’t know. I’m not sure I’d feel so comfortable being in a place like that alone.”

Jester reached across the table to pat her mother on the hand. “I understand. It’s probably just a dumb party anyway, I’m sure you won’t be missing much!”

“It’s…well, it’s the 400th Anniversary Gala of the Clovis Concord.”

“Oh, man.”

“Tell me about it, dear,” Marion sighed.

There was a moment’s pause, filled with the sound of thoughtful chewing.

And then:

“What if we went with you?”

Marion blinked twice.

“I beg your pardon?”

— — —

They left Luc in his new bedroom happily slapping tape to the wall. Yeza had been worried that this would damage the paint when they’d eventually have to take down his posters, but Nott reassured him that getting back the safety deposit for this apartment was already a lost cause.

“There was a…small incident,” she said, as he poured her tea, “involving electricity. And…a mild fire.”

“Oh, man. Did you guys blow the fuse box or something?”

Nott debated whether or not exploding a microwave with voltaic bolts fell under that category.

“Mm, yeah, it was something like that.” She watched him sink into the chair across the table, paying special attention to the way his glasses bounced on his nose.

He hadn’t needed glasses three years ago. He hadn’t been quite so pale, either.

“So, how is your friend Caleb?” Yeza asked, tilting his head slightly at her silence. “Is he alright? Settled in and everything?”

Nott quickly scrounged up her smile. “He is! Actually, his place is really nice. Cheap, too, from what I’ve heard.”

“Oh, that’s great,” Yeza sipped his tea, leaving a little half-crescent above his lip. “I was worried about him. You told him for me, right? How much I appreciate this?”

“Of course I did. And I told him plenty that he didn’t have to, but he really insisted, and…well. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t happy that he did.”

Yeza put a biscuit in her hands. “We’ll send him a fruit basket, then. With pineapples! Heck, I should send one to all of your friends, for pitching in for the plane tickets. They’re really kind.”

“They are pretty great, aren’t they?” Nott took a bite, coating her tongue with chalky crumbs. “They’ll probably be around at some point—they want to see you and the boy again.”

“Is the tall one still around? With the pink hair? I liked him.”

Nott gave a laugh. “I’ll tell him you said that. It’s been quiet these last few days, you know, so it’ll really be great to have the company back. Not that—oh, gods, not that you and Luc aren’t—”

“I get it, I get it,” Yeza shook his head. “Don’t worry. Like we said over the phone, right? It’ll take…there’ll be an adjustment period.”

Nott set her mug down on the table. Her smile was a little less firm now.

“You and Luc are here,” she said again, quietly. “You’re here, but I…I’m talking about my friends, I shouldn’t be saying those things, should I? I…should focus on you two—”

“Hey, no, Veth. Not at all.”

“But it is unfair,” she sighed. “I…sweetie, I’m so happy to see you, and the boy, but now that…Caleb’s gone, and the two of you have moved in, a…a part of me, an awful part of me, already misses—”

“Veth, it’s okay—"

“It’s not, I mean we’re married—gods, wait, I’d never betray—”

“Veth.”

A hand touched her shoulder. Yeza’s voice was low and soft. “Honey, it’s okay. It really is okay, and I…I know. It’s complicated. I know. We haven’t been a family for a while—and none of that is your fault, it just isn’t. It’s just…been a tough few years, for us, but also especially for you. I doubt I could’ve survived what you’ve been through, after all. And things have changed—I’ve changed, I mean—I snore again, and I’ve gotten used to Edith helping around our house, and…I guess what I’m trying to say, is that it’s only natural…it’s only fair, that you’re allowed to change too. It’s okay. We talked about this, right?”

“Right,” Nott murmured.

“So it’ll be okay. We’ll make it work. And it’s still you, right? You still love me, right?”

She felt herself nod. Then, gently, “I didn’t stop loving you.”

“Well, that’s good. Neither did I.”

This time, she risked a glance up, and saw his smile. Yeza’s smiles were always a little lop-sided, smushing his freckles, and crinkling one eye. She’d made fun of that when they were younger, and let go of a breath when she saw that hadn’t changed.

As she exhaled, she gave a nod. Then a chuckle.

“Right. Right. Of course we will. We’re…probably going to have to enroll Luc in school. It—it’s summer now, but when autumn swings around…what is he? In first grade? In second?”

Yeza laughed. “This fall will be his first year of school.” Then his eyes widened. “Oh, gods, it’s his first year of school. He…I don’t even know if he’s ready, if he’s…wait, is it different in Nicodranas? Are there tests? Is this a good school district, I—I didn’t even check—”

This time, it was Veth who stopped him. “Relax,” she said, and poked Yeza’s nose. “His dad is the most brilliant chemist in the world. We can look up all that other stuff.”

She brushed his cheek with her other thumb. “Like you said. We’ve got this. We’ll make it work.”

— — —

It had started with a recipe for blueberry muffins.

It had ended, more or less, somewhere around the time that Caleb realized neither he nor Essek owned measuring cups—and anyway, the blueberries were looking a little mushy so maybe he should wait until next week to surprise the Brenattos, that way he’d have a chance to get better ones, even though their move-in day was technically today—

And at that point, Frumpkin had jumped into the cabinet, dislodging what sounded like years’ worth of unused pots, knocking down an avalanche of dusty pans.

The last skillet clanged like thunder as it spun to a stop on the floor.

“Mist. Frumpkin—”

Ever the cat, Frumpkin deftly wove out of Caleb’s grasp and darted for the counter. He perched himself unblinking at the edge of the sink and licked his paw, as if for emphasis.

Caleb sighed. He crouched down to reach for the nearest displaced kitchen implement, a stock pot.

“You know,” he began, exasperated, “you could at least help me out with this mess.”

“Is that so?”

He whipped around so quickly that his head hit the handle of a drawer. One hand flew up, he startled, “Miste—Essek?”

His landlord raised a curved eyebrow. With the mid-afternoon light streaming in through the windows, the purplish tint to Essek’s complexion was something akin to a dusting of twilight. His hair was half-tousled, like it’d been mussed by something, and his hand lingered on the doorknob.

“I…my cat,” Caleb managed. “That is, er. I apologize. Deeply. For the commotion.”

Essek looked him over. “I thought we had agreed on silence last night, no?”

Caleb hung his head, and he could feel disappointment coming, undoubtedly with despair on its coattails.

“I have broken the terms,” he said mutely. “I…I am sorry. I understand what that means.”

His gaze clung to the polished floor. Which was why he missed it when the heavy stock pot took on a faint, shimmering, blueish glow. And then the saucepan began to shine. And then a wok, a spatula, a bowl—

All of the fallen cookware slowly began to rise through the air. As they moved, a parade past Caleb’s amazed expression, slipping by Frumpkin’s outstretched paw, each individual pot righted itself, formed into lines, then were quickly and neatly whisked away into the cabinet above.

The doors clicked as they shut.

“I…but that—what spell was that?”

Mentally, Caleb kicked himself. He should’ve apologized.

But Essek only chuckled. “Oh, that was just a parlor trick. An idle curiosity about the…shall we say, limits of gravity. Particularly regarding how easy they are to break.”

Caleb scrambled up to his feet. “But I have never seen control like that on such a grand scale before. Your spell, it—Telekinesis only controls one object at once.”

“Well,” Essek allowed himself a smirk. “Telekinesis is a watered-down version of what true dunamancy can accomplish. I will say, even getting that far was impressive. I have seen your documentation.”

“Gods,” though, Caleb noticed, there was not a trace of resentment in his tone. “Here I thought our transmutative literature was the most advanced there was.”

Essek shrugged. “Please, do not misunderstand me. It is good, for Empire wizards, especially. Until then, I had been under the impression that your lot only excelled at evocation.”

“We are a dab hand at necromancy too,” Caleb said dryly, “if the stories from twenty years ago are believed.”

This actually won a laugh. “Maybe I am the one being too cruel. It was your people who pioneered the earliest manipulations of air elemental magic, no? It is truly an interesting method for conquering gravity.”

“Yours is better,” Caleb said, before he could stop himself. “If you think that a parlor trick, my friend, I hesitate to ask else you could accomplish.”

“Why hesitate?”

And then, Caleb blinked. Somewhere in the distance, Frumpkin nudged his shoulder, but in that moment, all he could focus on was Essek.

“I…excuse me?”

And with that, the spell was broken. Essek slid into a kitchen chair.

“Nevermind, nevermind,” he waved his hand. “And please. Do not worry about that mess. I am not so unreasonable to think that accidents can never happen. Just, ah…you have been a wonderful roommate so far. In the future…?”

“You have my word,” Caleb said. He slipped the carton of slightly-mushy blueberries behind him.

“Excellent,” Essek nodded. “Well. If that is settled, I might sit here and, ah…get some work done?”

Caleb, dense as he was, got the message. “I just—of course, I will be gone in a moment, I’ll just put these things away—”

“No rush at all. I am not in any hurry.”

And indeed, whether or not Essek was just being polite, it did seem like the man was…a bit distracted. Caleb had no right to poke into his business, which was a violation of Section II, Subsection IV anyway, but he couldn’t help but ask Frumpkin to take the tiniest peek at Essek’s face.

Something was bothering his landlord. And for once, still basking in the afterglow of powerful magic, Caleb was almost sure it wasn’t him.

He found out just as he was heading to his room.

“Might I, ah, ask you a question?”

Caleb had enough composure to turn around at a normal person’s pace.

“Yes?”

Essek ran a hand through his hair. “Actually, it…it is more of a favor.”

“Oh,” said Caleb. And when more was required, “Yes?”

“Yes already?” He blinked. “But I did not say what it was.”

“I meant,” Caleb amended, leaning against his doorframe, “please describe this favor to me.”

“Ah,” said Essek. “Right. I, er…”

How in the gods’ names was he supposed to phrase something ridiculous as this?

“I wonder…” he tried, “that is…if you might…would it be…are you perhaps…are you busy this weekend?”

Whatever he was expecting, this absolutely was not it.

“I—no?” Caleb said, out of pure shock. Then he shook his head and added, “I do not think so, no.”

“Ah,” said Essek. Somehow he seemed even more uncomfortable now. “That is…excellent.” It did not sound excellent. “If…well, if that is the case, then…do you think you could…help me with something?”

Caleb waited patiently. “With something?”

“A date.”

“A what?”

“No—not—oh, gods, I am doing this wrong.” Essek actually put his head in his hands, and Caleb once again had to throttle his own surprise.

Then, in a move made by a part of him so bold he didn’t even know he still had it, Caleb re-entered the kitchen and down in the seat across from Essek.

“I think, perhaps you should start from the beginning.”

Essek nodded miserably. He breathed in.

“You are right, Caleb.”

He breathed out.

“So. It’s like this…”

— — —

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mollymauk-teafleak · 3 years

Text

whose brow is laid in thorn (chapter six)

Seems I can’t write a penultimate chapter in any widomauk fic were Caleb doesn’t end the chapter passed out

Huge thanks to my wonderful beta readers @minky-for-short and @spiky-lesbian!

I got out to bed to go post this guys, please reblog and leave a comment on Ao3

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Mollymauk realises he might get the love of his life back and lose him in the same day

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There had never been much of the king in the crown prince.

The two of them could not have appeared more different, in the obvious places like race and age, personality and attitude, the decisions they made and the way they talked, moved and dressed. And then there were the myriad subtle differences that only someone with a close vantage point would see, the way their minds worked behind their eyes, the things that drove them, what they wanted and what they were willing to do to get it. The two men could not have been more different.

But right now, facing his anger, Caleb could see Babenon Dosal behind his friend’s red eyes. He saw a king.

He wasn’t surprised Mollymauk had chosen anger, it was the easier emotion to grapple with after reading the letter and realising what Caleb had done. When he’d commanded their friends to leave, his voice quiet and clipped and full of rage about to slip it’s leash, Caleb had been impassive, accepting, simply giving their dismayed, stunned glances a gentle nod of acknowledgement. He simply folded his hands behind his back and faced the fury of a man who had been brought up being told he was the rightful ruler of everything he could see past the horizon.

The letter from Lorenzo was crushed in his grip as he growled, “How dare you. How fucking dare you, Caleb. Are you aware of what you’ve just done?”

“Forging the prince’s signature on the letter I wrote to Lorenzo proposing single combat,” Caleb intoned, expressionlessly, listing his crimes like they were a shopping list he was being sent to market with, “Deliberately circumventing the prince’s wishes. Negotiating with a hostile party without the crown’s leave. Risking everything, our land and our people. High treason, all in all. Execution would be the penalty in any court.”

“And for what?” Molly spat, shaking, his tear streaked cheeks dark purple with anger, “What, Caleb?”

“To keep you safe,” emotion slipped into Caleb’s voice, as much as he tried to keep it at bay, “To save your life.”

He watched Molly choke on that, the letter slipping through his grasp as it slackened. Caleb made a mental note with the part of his brain not consumed by grief to pick it up later. It was all they had of Lorenzo’s oath not to take the city if Caleb should fail.

“I couldn’t watch you die, Mollymauk,” he continued, swallowing hard, “I couldn’t. It wasn’t fair of you to ask that of me. Go with me or go after me but gods, please don’t make me live in a world that doesn’t have you in it.”

“So now I have to watch you die instead?” his voice broke on that word, as if his throat couldn’t bear to say it and smashed it to splintered pieces.

“Well,” Caleb gave a bleak, brittle smile, “You won’t be far behind me if I do.”

“Fuck you,” Molly spat but it was more of a sob now, “Fuck you, Caleb Widogast.”

“He spoke to me,” Caleb sighed, knowing it would be best to get this out of the way too, “He...he entered my mind and spoke to me. Ikithon.” The urge to call him master was easy to shake off when he had his heart aching towards Molly.

“What?” Molly looked up from where he’d gripped his hair in anguish, face slack in horror, “Gods, that's the worst kind of banned magic. He could be executed for using that.”

“I don’t think he plans on being beholden to your father’s judgement for much longer,” Caleb shrugged, “He told me to defect. To betray you and go over to Lorenzo. I don’t know if he actually thought it would work, Lorenzo would have just run me through as soon as he saw me or hanged me for a traitor. Ikithon likely wouldn’t have cared either way.”

“He…” Molly stared at Caleb, “He gave you a direct order. He broke into your mind and told you to do this thing and you just...didn’t?”

“No. I didn’t. I did the exact opposite actually.” Again, a bleak, crooked smile, he couldn’t help it.

Pride edged into Molly’s expression for a moment before anguish flooded his expression again, “But this is just it, isn’t it? Don’t you see, Caleb, this is why I wanted to do this, this is why I’m so fucking mad at you. That vile creature has already hurt you so much, he’s already tortured you and took everything from you and all because of me! I just wanted one godsdamned time where I could help you instead of cause you more hurt, where I could actually save you like I’ve wanted to since I first met you. But every time, every fucking time, I just make it worse and I cause you more pain. How can I ask you to love me after all of this, after he hurt you for doing exactly that, after he took it away from you.”

“No. He didn’t,” Caleb whispered, “He didn’t take that away from me. I thought he had but...no.”

Molly froze and the whole world seemed to hold its breath, this awful, terrible night finally stopped and allowed them a moment.

“Caleb…” Molly breathed, his anger gone, his face soft and hopeful and so, so scared.

“So ask me again,” tears were thick in his throat but he got the words out clear and true, “Please, Mollymauk. Ask me one more time.”

He didn’t hesitate, “Love me? Love me the way I love you?”

“Yes,” Caleb didn’t lower his voice, he didn’t pull back from it, he didn’t care who heard, “I love you, Mollymauk. Whether we die tomorrow or we live for another hundred years, I will love you for every single second we have.”

He waited. A heartbeat passed. Two. Three.

And his mind stayed silent, clear and completely his own.

They surged together, meeting in the middle, the years and the distance shrinking down to nothing between them as their bodies collided and moulded to each other the way they always had done. Caleb had grown taller, so much so that Molly had to tilt his head up to kiss him, his jaw was rough with stubble that hadn’t been there before, his prince’s hands were rough and calloused when they wound around his shoulders. They were not the teenagers they had been, loving recklessly and wildly, fates throwing them together and saying here, here is the person you were meant for.

They were not the same. Now they were older, they’d both suffered and struggled and been broken many times. Instead they were choosing to love each other, in defiance of everything that said they couldn’t, accepting it along with all of its risks and all of the pain it would cause them.

And it was just as sweet.

Each man meant to pull away at some point but somehow, they kept finding themselves pulled under, a world where their lips weren’t pressed together just seeming completely unacceptable. And when Caleb’s felt Molly’s split tongue stroke against his own, he shivered and leaned into that as well, pressing on deeper and deeper until they both realised in the same moment that soon, there wouldn’t be any turning back.

“Do you…” Molly drew back first, panting raggedly and having to make a few attempts at actually speaking, “Do you want to? I mean...I’d be perfectly content with this, this is bliss but…”

“I want to,” Caleb said firmly, sure of the words as he said them though never doubting that Molly would let him pull back from that ledge if he chose to, “I can’t think of a better way to spend the last night I might have on this plane.”

“Don’t,” Molly breathed, leaning in until their lips were almost touching again, “None of that. This night is everything. And I’m not letting anyone take it away from us this time.”

Finding that more than agreeable, Caleb sank willingly into kissing Mollymauk, though this time there was more purpose to it, it felt like climbing towards some end, swimming towards some shore. After a while, he felt his dear prince’s hands slip from where they held the back of his head, moving to push Caleb’s heavy black overcoat off his shoulders. In between kisses, he let himself be undressed, the uniform of those people he’d never wanted to be and hadn’t ever been able to truly claim him, pulled away by his lover’s hands until he stood there as nothing but himself.

When he stood bare before him, every inch of his scarred body open to the cold night and Mollymauk’s gaze, a mean, cold part of Caleb looked for disappointment in his expression. Of course there was none, just the face a man might wear when he saw home at the end of a long, bitter journey. The cruel teeth of the whip, the scars on his arms where the crystals had been embedded, the pale white bands around his arms where manacles had chafed him, Molly saw every inch of it and did not pity him or look away in shame. He understood him.

Caleb was granted the same privilege to Mollymauk, pulling away his dust stained tunic and leggings, hard worn from the road and so different from what he would choose to wear. What was underneath was less surprising, he’d seen more of Molly’s skin than Molly ever had of his, but knowing it was his to kiss and touch and love made all the difference. He was scarred too, the thin, feathery nicks from his swords and the neat, surgical scars on his chest where his body had been brought in line with his heart. And all of the ink too, in it’s startling colour, the fantastical forests that carpeted one arm, the serpent that wound around the other, the eyes and the glorious peacock that sheltered his heart the way Molly’s own brightness and frippery had kept him safe.

It was familiar but no less beautiful for that.

Caleb could have gazed at him until the sun came up, never laid a finger on his skin and been content, but they didn’t have long.

Molly drew him over to the camp bed he’d been tossing and turning on since they started out, letting Caleb press him back against it with more kisses, ones that spread across his chest and neck and jawline, falling faster and more hurried like rain moving from drizzle to showers. Molly made the sweetest noises, chest rising and falling more rapidly under his lips, prompting him to suck some marks into his soft purple skin. He gave very little thought to his own body, lost on the midst of it all, until Molly’s hand reached down between his legs and brushed his growing erection lightly, making him jump like he’d been given an electric shock.

“Sorry,” Molly giggled breathlessly, grinning like the man he was rather than the prince he’d been playing, “Um...I want you in me.”

“Yes?” Caleb murmured, coming close again. He crouched over Molly, knees bracketing his hips, hands bracing himself against the edge of the cot, quickly getting drunk on the tousled view it gave him of his lover.

Mollymauk nodded, hand still down between Caleb’s thighs, stroking lightly, “It’s what I want. Please.”

“I am ever yours to command,” Caleb grinned crookedly, making sure Molly was laughing when he moved to kiss him again and parted his legs with his own.

Their last time had been fumbling, uncertain, hurried. The two of them had both had a flagon of wine between them and felt invincible, Molly’s birthday party coming to them muffled through the floor beneath them, the strings singing like the desire in their blood.

It wasn’t too different this time, they were still uncertain and groping at each other, Caleb dropping the vial of oil Molly handed him from his pack, Molly jerking so hard when Caleb thumbed his sweet spot that he accidentally kicked him in the stomach, letting need drive their bodies. It was strange how feeling young and invincible invoked the exact same feelings as knowing you had so little time left.

Moving into Mollymauk knocked the breath from Caleb, he had to take a moment and rest his forehead on his lover’s and inhale deeply, steadying and centring before he could move on. But Molly’s hands were on his shoulders, his groans and soft cries filled the space between them, his legs locked around his hips as they rocked in time with the creaking of the bed beneath them. All of it was an anchor, a map, showing him where to go, certainty finally when he’d been lost for so long.

Caleb couldn’t last long, not with ten years of waiting and wanting, he tried to stammer it out to Mollymauk who only reached up and cupped his face with a gentle hand, nodding softly. There wasn’t a wrong way to do this. When he came, it was a white hot flash behind his eyes, every muscle tight and tense and shaking. He heard his name fall from Molly’s lips as he followed close behind, his nails digging into his shoulder.

Afterwards it was the same delicate, tenuous silence that came after a deep sigh, one that seemed to ring out longer than it should. Neither of them wanted to move away, like the perfect moment of happiness they’d found would tear off into nothing if they looked at it too closely. It was impossible to not think of this point the first time they’d made love, here where everything had fallen apart, when they’d believed in what they felt for each other and had been proven so bitterly wrong. When the door had thrown open and the real world had come pouring in.

Eventually, it was Caleb who had the bravery to speak first, surprising even himself.

“I won’t lose, Molly,” he murmured, voice ragged around the edges, “I won’t. Not for you.”

He nodded, tears sparking in the corners of his eyes, “Of course. I know you won’t, Caleb.”

He could see it in his prince’s eyes, he was thinking of the moment when Lorenzo’s arm had slipped that extra inch, the one he hadn’t wanted to allow him. He was thinking of the power that had sizzled off that grey skin, ready to rage up and match his own. But he said nothing and Caleb loved him for that. That and many reasons.

But that would come in the morning. Here and now, Caleb was happy for the first time in so long and he was going to enjoy every single moment.

Mollymauk was loath to let Caleb sleep but the reality of what was going to happen in the morning was a bitter taste in his mouth growing by the minute. He couldn’t let him face that battlefield without a wink of sleep, no matter how much Caleb had insisted in the past that Volstruker didn’t need it.

But his love wasn’t Volstruker any more. And so Molly would let him sleep a few hours, however much it ached.

He lay there in the quiet, the forest sounds muffled through the canvas of the tent, ignoring the rustling of the leaves and far off calls of the birds so Caleb’s heartbeat under his ear would be the only sound in the world. Strong and sure and constant, like it would go on and on forever. As vital and necessary as the motion of the tides or the thrum of magic through the threads of the universe.

If he thought of it like that, it was easier to believe that today would not be the last day it beat.

Mollymauk found the fear for himself evaporated entirely, what burned in the back of his mind and brought tears to his eyes so easily was only the thought of losing Caleb, the minutes and hours he might have to spend on this planet without him. From this side of the glass, he did hate himself a little for putting Caleb in this position, for doing the same to his friends, for being so quick to sacrifice himself, however right it had seemed at the time.

Pain and fear for your own self was nothing compared to the idea of losing someone you loved.

And he did love Caleb. And Caleb loved him. They’d said it so many times during the night, like they were trying to make up for a decade of separation, trying to fill the holes left by so many times they’d wanted to say it but couldn’t. And each time, it grew no less sweet to hear those words, to love and be loved by the man he’d wanted his whole life.

Molly turned and pressed a soft kiss to his lover’s skin, just over his heartbeat, gentle enough that it wouldn’t wake him. All the years he’d feigned confidence, now he actually felt it in all it’s iron hard certainty as he told any gods that might be listening you will not take him from me. Not now.

It was rather kingly of him, actually, to think he could command the gods.

But it gave Molly what he needed to rise from their little bed and face the greying light in the tent, the dawn approaching faster than he wanted it to. He moved around in the milky darkness, fumbling without any servant or attendant to guide him, opening chests and pulling out clothes, rescuing his boots from a far corner of the tent. Molly knew he had to dress while he still had the strength, not knowing what the fear and grief would do moment to moment.

He chose no chainmail, no padded gambeson. He wouldn’t need to armour himself today and he had no desire to play any role. He would face this day as himself, dressed in simple leggings and a purple surcoat he favoured, rich with embroidery.

“Would you like me to sneak out now? Or are we going to face the smug grins of our friends?”

Molly jumped just as he was doing the last button, turning and seeing Caleb stretched out contentedly under the thin blanket they’d pulled over themselves when they’d both been too exhausted to continue. He was smiling, resting up on one elbow, looking so wonderfully tousled and ruffled, hair in disarray and mouth shaped bruises blooming on his shoulders, that Molly would have given anything for just another half hour alone with him.

“You’re going nowhere,” he whispered back, closing the distance between them and going to his knees so he could kiss those lips and feel all the nicks and swells in them from everything they’d done together.

“How long do we have?” Caleb eventually murmured, when they paused for air.

“An hour, I’d say,” Molly sighed and suddenly, saying it out loud and realising what a small amount of time that was, such a cruel and meagre slice to be given, his throat closed up and tears flooded his eyes.

Caleb groaned softly and kissed his forehead, bringing one hand to stroke back his purple curls and wind through the hairs at the nape of his neck, fixing in them and saying firmly, “It will be alright, Mollymauk. I promise.”

“That’s not something you can promise,” he gasped, breath coming in a shudder, wanting to be brave for him, wanting to believe for him, but unable.

“No,” Caleb admitted, his other hand moving to gently wipe away the tears that had spilled down Molly’s cheek, “But I have been trained for this. And for the first time, I actually believe in my own strength.”

“Yes?” Molly whispered, wanting to cling to every scrap of hope, not caring how much it hurt.

“Yes,” Caleb smiled crookedly and, for as much as he hated the gathering light, Mollymauk was glad he could see it, “Because this time I have something to fight for.”

No one had called for any trumpet blast or signal to raise the camp but he found most of the company were already up and moving, apparently having as much appetite for sleep as Molly had. Fires were going, heating up rations no one felt like eating and the usual coarse conversation of soldiers on campaign, the teasing and calling out to each other across the tents, had found no purchase that morning. Even though they weren’t facing battle today, even with just two lives hanging in the balance, everyone seemed to be grieving already.

Until Molly and Caleb spilled out of the command tent, hand in hand, an unmistakable rumpled quality to Caleb’s uniform and the obvious bruises from fingers and teeth peering out from under shirt cuffs and collars, blundering right into the circle of their friends around the cookfire.

There was a moment of silence as four sets of eyes regarded them without much surprise.

“Well,” Beau shrugged, “Better late that fucking never, I guess.”

And with that the lot of them were laughing helplessly, the wild, reckless laughter of teenagers with a slightly manic edge to it, drawing confused and alarmed eyes from all around the camp. It made little sense but Molly did feel like he could breathe a little easier once it had passed.

He pressed food on Caleb who tried to refuse it but quickly realised his lover wasn’t going to be put off and gave in. Molly watched him closely, sitting on the ground right beside him and never letting their fingers untangle, but there was no fear or worry in his face. He seemed to be his usual self, almost the Caleb he remembered from his childhood and teenage years, dryly funny and contentedly quiet.

Mollymauk couldn’t tell if it was just Caleb was that confident or he was enjoying himself while he could.

The moment couldn’t be put off forever. Again, Molly had to appear strong and sure, for his friends and for his soldiers, swinging up confidently onto his horse to lead them back to yesterday’s clearing as if nothing was wrong. It felt less like lying, as he saw the younger ones in the company visibly relax after he joked with them and chatted amicably with them, making his usual rides up and down the column until they arrived. It felt more like just being a leader.

Like protecting the people who looked to him for guidance and would call him king.

It wasn’t a long ride and they heard the commotion before they got there, the sound of raised voices and clamour of the enormous Jagenoth army, already there and raising enough of a racket to make the ground shake under the hooves of Molly’s horse as he rode back to the head of the column, just in time to see them unfurl out over the rise of the hill. Just like yesterday, they boiled down below them like a mass of black insects, the sharp teeth of their weapons edged in fire as the sun broke the horizon just to the side of them and flooded the bowl of the valley with gold.

The lone figure standing ahead of them, the hulking mass armoured all in black iron but for the horns that thrust up from it’s brow, a glaive taller than Mollymauk plunged into the ground beside him, must have looked up at just the right moment. It raised a fist high as if in salute and, behind it, the soldiers fell silent in a moment and snapped to attention with a reverberating clash of metal.

Molly’s fingers grew tight around his reins but, beside him, Caleb simply smiled.

“Real strength doesn’t need to announce itself,” he intoned, clearly quoting something before chucking, “A lot of what they taught me at the academy was bullshit but that certainly rings true at least. He couldn’t look more like he’s trying to compensate for something. Rather funny, actually.”

“If you say so,” Molly muttered, unable to take his eyes from the blade.

He saw very little to find amusing.

“Good morning,” Lorenzo hailed them cheerily, his voice deeper and rougher in his true form and through the enormous helm obscuring his face.

Molly gave him no reply but a cold, hard stare, walking his entire troupe up this time, this would require as many witnesses as possible to ensure Lorenzo kept faith and, more than that, he wanted Caleb to see just how many people were behind him.

Already a ground had been cleared for combat, ringed in stones by some of the Jagenoths. Clearly wanting to be prepared, a headsman’s block had also been erected on their side of the ground, freshly cut from some felled tree, green wood ready to drink Molly’s life blood in front of his own people. Beau spat on it as they reared up, her eyes glaring acid across the field at Lorenzo.

“Dressed to die,” Lorenzo said, satisfied, obsidian eyes glinting out at Molly from within his helm, “Mighty considerate of you, boy.”

“I could say the same of you,” Molly answered, dropping any hint of courtly manners, “I can see the joint gaps in that armour from here.”

“Don’t matter when you’ve got a reach like this,” he snarled, gripping the handle of his enormous blade and yanking it from the earth, leaving a deep gash in the ground, “Shall we begin? It’s a long road back to Shady Creek Run and your pretty head won’t keep forever. Let me put this mouthy little pup down and do what I came here to do.”

Caleb simply nodded, moving his coat to the side to draw his blade. The same nicked, worn blade he’d been fighting with all his life. That, his magic and the poniards in his boots against all of the strength and brutality on display before them.

Perhaps irritated by Caleb’s refusal to rise to his taunts, Lorenzo continued hollering across the circle, “I was expecting you last night, pup, by what your master told me. I was looking forward to snicking the smile off your face when you slunk up looking for a place in my army. Just that, mind. The rest of you I’d leave to your black booted brothers and sisters.”

Caleb didn’t so much as glance at him, accepting his fingerless leather gloves from Beau and calmly slipping them on as if he had all the time in the world. Molly remembered the day Caleb had finally admitted at fifteen years old that Beau was right and wearing them did make his grip better. He even took the time to clasp his friend’s shoulder and smile reassuringly, then moving to give Fjord the same then Caduceus then Yasha, every one of them embracing him tightly.

“Clearly you were otherwise occupied!” Lorenzo called, though the anger was bubbling more clearly under his voice now, his composure slipping, “I’d heard you were acting the whore for the boy prince over there. I knew they trained you well at the Soltryce but not in those particular arts. Ever dutiful when commanded, eh?”

Molly was a muscle jump in Caleb’s jaw at that but he smoothed it out within a second. Now they were nose to nose and everything fell away that wasn’t Caleb’s face, his steady hands, his gentle, comforting smile. He had the privilege of tying back his rust red hair in a leather band, making sure every strand was clear of his face.

Once it was done, Caleb turned and sank down on one knee, holding his blade up. Trapped by convention and appearances, Molly was left to press a kiss to the cold metal rather than his lover’s lips, trying to say everything he felt with his eyes.

“Please come back to me,” he whispered when their faces were at their closest, “Or wait for me at hell’s gate.”

Caleb smiled up at him, eyes like still pools, “As you command.”

Seeing the two of them at opposite ends of the killing field, it was like a bad joke. Lorenzo, in his full, unrestrained oni form, wrapped in thick iron and the barbed chains of his profession as torturer and slaver, hulking so large the shadow he cast stretched off him like a giant beast, climbing up the hills around them to impossible heights. And Caleb, wearing no armour but the leather bands on his arms, thin sword in his hand, face perfectly still. Half Lorenzo’s height, a quarter of his weight, a bare fraction of his reach, dwarfed by his strength. It was like watching a child face down a dragon in some fairytale.

And Molly had learned long ago that life was no storybook. If it was, Caleb would never have been taken from him, they would have lived happily ever after. And he wouldn’t be about to watch him die.

It was his task to begin the fight, they were waiting for his command. He swallowed hard and opened his mouth, the urge to desperately beg for Caleb to come back, to stop all of this, to take it all back, was overwhelming but he managed to rasp out the right words instead, the words that would end his lover’s life.

“At arms...and begin.”

Lorenzo lurched forward with a roar, all the momentum of a charging bull barrelling towards Caleb and hefting the glaive forward.

And Caleb did not move.

Everything seemed to slow, seconds dripped by like a dying rainstorm, the scream to move, bloody move caught in Molly’s throat as the blade completed its easy, unstoppable arc through the air…

And whistled through nothing.

Lorenzo had to stagger to stop himself, overtopping with the speed he’d built up and falling to one knee. Caleb, the real Caleb, not the shadow of himself he’d left standing in his enemy’s path, lanced a quick but deep cut along the back of Lorenzo’s neck, through the joint where his helmet met the shoulder plates. It might have been enough, it should have been enough, but some dark magic reared up from the armour itself, some misshapen haze in the air that lashed out at Caleb and forced him to dance back so it only just caught him lightly across the chest and left a burn mark on the front of his coat. The smell of singed leather and shield spells filled the dawn air.

“You think you’re the only one with magic, pup?” Lorenzo snarled, furious, “Try this then.”

An ozone smell popped and crackled and where Lorenzo had stood one instant, the next was nothing but thin air. Molly moaned softly in despair as he saw Caleb’s brow crease in a frown. With a flick of his wrist, the blade of the sword he carried alighted with dark flame and he held it out warily, staying on the balls of his feet as he waited for a strike he couldn’t see coming.

There were a few agonising moments of silence, tension building like a budding blister, until it was finally broken when a guttural laugh echoed out from nowhere and everywhere all at once and some force knocked Caleb backwards, sweeping his feet out from under him. Mercifully he managed to keep hold of his blade and had something to throw up to meet the invisible thing that clashed against his sword. Almost immediately, Caleb was sweating, trembling with the effort of keeping back what could only be the wicked edge of the glaive, now slightly, eerily, visible as fire leapt from the sword to flicker across it. How his thin arms were matching Lorezo’s whole weight, Molly couldn’t say, until he saw the veins on Caleb’s only just visible wrist and neck turning black with magic.

Volstrucker magic.

A fresh fear bit into Molly’s already battered chest. How much of his old training could Caleb rely on without slipping back into the darkness that had claimed so much of his mind?

The tension snapped when Caleb’s flame finally edged down the handle of the invisible glaive enough to highlight the shape of the fingers that held it. Even lobstered gauntlets would greedily drink the heat of any fire and after a few seconds of contact, Lorenzo wrenched away with a roar of pain and anger, the invisibility spell flickering out. Caleb didn’t waste a second of his freedom, leaping to his feet and driving a hard flurry of attacks at any fissure in the armour, the ones he’d been carefully mapping out and memorising since he laid eyes on Lorenzo.

But he could only attack as long as the glaive was down, once it was wrenched back up, it’s reach and thickness covered Lorenzo too well. Then all Caleb could do was put as much distance between him and his opponent as possible, his speed the only weapon he had that could possibly contest Lorenzo’s. He led him in a chase around the ring, dodging his swings and ducking the clumsy grabs he made, clearly hoping to see him tire.

But Lorenzo only seemed to grow more furious. He lunged with more anger, he pelted Caleb with taunts and curses when he couldn’t reach him with his blade, foam began to build in the slats of his helm. He began using spells, forcing Caleb to counter with magic of his own, summoning beams of light to cut through spheres of darkness that shrouded him, blasting fire from his palms to meet a cone of icy blizzard that lanced at him.

There was a terrifying moment when the pungent lavender smell of a sleep spell wrapped around Caleb and his eyelids began to droop, costing him the speed he relied on, bringing him to his knees and finally holding him in one place. Lorenzo rushed to press the advantage, swinging his blade with sickening abandon. It was only at the very last moment that Caleb managed to throw off the compulsion, eyes snapping wide and a powerful burst of fire throwing Lorenzo off of him, sending him flying back a good few feet.

A cheer of relief went up from Molly’s troupe, one he tried to echo but all he could see was the blood washing down Caleb’s arm from his shoulder where the edge of the blade had managed to make a savage cut and leave it hanging limp, the stark blackness of his veins against his chalky skin, the way his chest was heaving and the edges of his hair were smoking softly.

“His spells,” he moaned faintly, stomach churning, “If he can’t use his arms, he can’t summon his spells.”

Beside him, Yasha put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently. Molly knew it was half to comfort him and half to hold him back.

Now that both men had drawn blood, the battle turned savage, both actively trying to take the life of the other. Cuts came harder and heavier, the magic burned with a ferocity that scorched the faces of those around the outside. Time seemed to lose all meaning, marked only by the wounds both fighters gained in quicker and quicker succession. Every time Caleb was struck, Molly felt it ache on his own flesh.

By the time the sun had reached a fair height in the sky, blood was oozing steadily from every gap Lorenzo had in his armour. The vast plates of his chest rose and fell with more force and his rough breathing could be heard echoing inside the helm. He was finally beginning to tire.

But it came far too late for Caleb. He was wounded in far more places, gashes on his arms, bruises covering his skin from where he’d been thrown or charged, the entire bottom half of his coat burned away in one of his own fire spells, frost burns on one side of his face. And his arm, that very first cut, hanging limp and useless, not enough energy in it to even rise. Even as he stood there, he visibly swayed, his eyes dulled with pain.

Lorenzo gave a deep, satisfied laugh, “You look ready to end this, my boy. Learned a harsh lesson, eh, about how well a wretch like you can stand against someone like me.”

Caleb growled something indistinct, something that came out as a choking rasp and came up with a spatter of blood from his mouth. He grit his teeth, sword still crackling with fire in his hand and struck out at Lorenzo with what had to be the last of his strength. Without so much as breaking a sweat, the enormous oni reached out and simply caught the wizard’s hand, holding it in a grip like iron and wrenching him up off the ground by it.

Caleb cried out in pain and Molly screamed but it only made Lorenzo’s grin wider. Moving as easily as if he were swatting a fly, he seized Caleb’s waist in his other gigantic hand and pulled. The snap of Caleb’s arm breaking echoed through the valley.

Cackling as if it was the funniest thing he’d seen in some time, Lorenzo simply let him drop to the ground, bloodied and beaten and now with two useless arms, one sliced and one broken. He lay limply in the dirt, chest barely moving, blood and tears and soil streaked on his face.

“A pretty trick, that,” Lorenzo was now admiring the flaming sword with vague amusement, “Might have turned the tide, if you had any clue how to use it.”

He broke the blade over one ironclad knee with ease, letting the two pieces gutter out before dropping them to the grass beside their equally burned out owner.

“No!” Molly was still screaming, now he’d started and shattered his composure he couldn’t stop, writhing in Yasha’s grip as he fought to reach Caleb, “No, no, please don’t!”

Lorenzo spared him a smug, satisfied grin, “Oh your turn will come, boy. But don’t think you’ll die easy as your little pup did.”

On the glass by his feet, Caleb struggled to rise. His eyes looked out at Molly through his matted hair, come loose from the tie he’d so carefully and lovingly put there for him. His lips were moving but it was impossible to tell what he was saying.

“You can have me, you can have anything, just please, please don’t hurt him!” Molly sobbed wildly.

“Ah now,” Lorenzo tilted his head in mockingly gentle admonishment, “That wasn’t our deal, was it, boy? Old Lorenzo’s good as his words these days. But don’t worry now, I’ll make sure you get a real good view…”

He reached down and plucked Caleb up by the scruff of his coat, dangling him there like a helpless kitten before setting him down on his knees, facing Mollymauk. In the other hand, the glaive swung up to press it’s cruel point to Caleb’s back, ready to be driven forwards, knowing exactly where to place it so when he pushed, it would pierce right through his heart.

“Oh I’ve been waiting for this,” he crooned, flexing the muscles of his arm ready to put all of his weight behind it.

“Caleb!” Molly screamed, tears burning his eyes and making the battlefield swim before him.

“All that training,” Lorenzo laughed, “All that magic and you still couldn’t best me, Volstruker!”

Molly’s eyes burned but he still caught it. The brief movement, the flexing of an arm that was cut, yes, but not as badly as Caleb had pretended. He saw it slip down, turned away from Lorenzo so he would be none the wiser, moving quick and clean with precise motions to take the dagger out of his boot.

Molly looked into Caleb’s eyes and saw them clear and bright.

Lorenzo’s surprise was so complete that the glaive’s blade turned easily, Caleb needed only to bat it to the side. With all of the strength left in his body, he sprang and neatly drove the dagger’s point right through the eye slot of the slaver’s helm. Eye, blood and brain parted almost politely for it.

There was a beat of silence as the Jagenoth’s about to erupt in cheers, as Molly’s forces gripped by horror tried to understand what they’d just seen. As Lorenzo himself stood frozen in shock at his own death until his body’s knees folded in on themselves and he slumped, lifeless, with a rather anticlimactic thud.

And in the middle of it all, as blood ran down his wrist, Caleb grinned.

“I am not Volstruker.”

Everything was swimming and the ground wouldn’t stay still underneath him. Something was roaring around him though perhaps it was the wind.

Every other part of his mind blurred and smudged, Caleb stared at the sky and distractedly calculated how long a person could survive losing blood at the rate it was pulsing out of his shoulder, taking into account the weakness from magical usage, the adrenaline, his height and weight, adding it all up with a blissful kind of detachment and realising the price was growing too high to pay.

I did it, he thought, without really understanding who or what he was talking about, he’s safe.

Knowing that, letting go right now wouldn’t be so bad.

The world suddenly found one direction to go in and it was downwards, his knees buckling and eyes rolling back in his head, darkness swallowing him whole.

Though Caleb could have sworn, before he ceased to think anything at all, that at the very last moment, someone caught him.

#widomauk #critical role #mollymauk tealeaf #trans mollymauk #caleb widogast #smut #tw violence #tw death #please reblog and comment!

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midnigtartist · 4 years

Text

so me and @millimauk made a mermaid au and its wholesome and very self indulgent

Certainly Caleb must be alive. If he were dead he’s sure his body wouldn’t ache as much as it does.

And oh does he ache

His muscles are sore and his chest feels as if it's full of lead, lungs still burning with each fresh breath he takes. The back of his throat is sore and his eyes sting behind his eyelids from the bitter bite of salt water that had been his whole encompassing reality just moments ago.

It is lucky, then, that the sea decided to spit him back up, and wash him back onto the shore, or surely he would have drowned. The sun is hot on his face and he can feel the waves lapping up against his calves as he lay there in the soft, wet sand, too exhausted to move.

However, it seems his body has different plans as his stomach churns up the last of the sea water he’d swallowed. With a retching cough, Caleb bolts up and heaves out the last of the brine. The effort of the movement makes his already sore chest ache but Caleb doesn’t stop until he’s emptied his stomach onto the beach. It’s there, gasping for breath and shaking as if with a fever, alone and battered on the empty beach, that he feels a hand touch his shoulder. His heavy limbs screaming their disapproval as he jumps at the contact, sending up a spray of sea water.

There’s a person sat beside him on the sand. A person so unlike anyone he’s ever seen before. With pale lavender skin and curling, sodden plum colored hair, and solid, swirling scarlet eyes, glassy and with no discernable pupil. He’s long and lean down the length of his scarred torso, all the way down to the end of his long, brightly colored tail. Delicate fins fan out along the length of it and Caleb can’t help but stare. On any other day, he would have said he was hallucinating, that the heat of the sun and the almost drowning was causing him to see things. Like strikingly handsome mermaids- mermen? But he’s sure this person isn't some vision brought on by heat stroke. Because this person is the reason he’d been out in the water in the first place. He remembers spying someone sitting out on the rocky bluff, remembers them turning and diving into the water and he had been so sure he’d seen a flash of scales as they’d disappeared. He remembers thinking “this is it” as he’d dropped his equimentent on the sand and wading out into the water, only to be caught by the undertow and dragged out to sea.

He’s spent so long searching for mermaids and, apparently, one has just saved his life.

There are a million things he wants to ask, so many questions that would put him leaps and bounds ahead in his research. Things he could show his colleges to prove that, no, he isn’t crazy or naive. But it seems,,,, rude somehow,,, to just dive into the questioning. After all, this man just saved him from what certainly would have been a watery death.

The mermaid is watching him carefully with those red eyes that seem to glow.

Does the color help him sea underwater?

His throat is thick and dry, but Caleb forces himself to form the words. “Ahh- are you the one who pulled me out of the water?”

The mermaid nods, smiling rather proudly at Caleb.

“Well thank you for that. I fear that I would have sank to the bottom of the sea if it weren’t for you so, ja, thank you.” Again the mermaid merely nods, so Caleb presses on. “My name is Caleb- ahh- Caleb Widogast. And you are? I would like to know the name of my savior so I can thank you properly.”

The mermaid opens his mouth, but all that comes out is a harsh, rasping screech that causes Caleb to flinch. The mermaid quickly shuts his mouth, face slipping from a kind smile to a furrowed brow. Caleb blinks “Can you not speak?” he asks.

The mermaid shakes his head.

“Are you hurt?”

Again the mermaid shakes his head, pointing to thin slits running the line of his throat, then to the ocean.

It doesn’t take long for Caleb to connect the dots.

“Oh! Oh I see ahh, you cannot- cannot speak outside of the water, ja?” he says.

The mermaid nods vigorously, glad, it seems, that Caleb understands.

Cale finds himself nodding along with him, his youthful glee returning tenfold as he stares intently at the gill flaps that twitch along the mermaid’s neck.

“That is fascinating” he breathes. “You’re vocal cords are not designed for air, it seems. Perhaps they are connected to your gills? Or water passing through them is what allows them to resonate? No, that cannot be it,, Maybe the density of the water lowers to the pitch to something more understandable-”

The mermaid's shoulders start to shake, and for one heart stopping moment Caleb fears he might be suffocating but a quick glances at his scrunched up and smiling face shows that he’s shaking with silent laughter.

The tips of Caleb ears burn with a blush. “I ahhh- I suppose I was rambling ja?” he mutters, ducking his head a bit.

The mermaid waves him off with an elegant hand, eyes all crinked up in the corners with mirth.

Caleb chuckles a bit himself. “Sorry. I do not mean to be rude it's just- you are exactly what I have been looking for.” The mermaid’s eyes go round and wide. Caleb rushes to continue. “Well not you specifically but ahhh- someone like you. I am, well, I do research on the ocean and the things that live in it, and I have been sure for a very long time now that someone like you existed. And well, here you are,,,”

He’s everything Caleb had imagined and then some.

The mermaid, and he's going to have to find a way to get this person’s name because it feels cold and clinical to simply refer to him as- the mermaid, takes a moment to mull this over, taking Caleb in with a sharp, discerning gaze.

Then he grins and shoves his hand into Caleb’s face. He spread his fingers wide, showing off the webbing between them, thin like the webbing of his fins in a darker shade of lavender then his skin is. Carefully, Caleb takes his offered wrist in hand and gently turns it.

“Incredible” he mummers, more to himself then the mermaid. Though the webbing looks as fine as lace it seems rather durable. He supposes it would have to be, in order to propelle him through the water. It also probably means that he swims as much with his arms as he does with his tail, which would debunk Caleb’s theory that the tail is the sole form of propulsion. There’s so much information to be gained here. He wonders of this mermaid would be willing to let him sketch him into his notes.

He’s so busy pondering all of this that it startles him when the mermaid snatches his hand from his loose grip and takes Caleb’s wrist instead. Caleb jumps at the feeling of cool, strangely rough finger pads against his skin. The mermaid spreads his fingers wide, a strangling noise of surprise rising up from his throat when he pulls them apart and finds no webbing between. His baffled gaze flickers up to catch Caleb’s eyes.

Caleb lets out a huff of laughter. “Ja, I suppose this is weird for you too. Well, I suppose it is only fair that you be able to conduct a bit of research yourself.” he blinks up at him. Caleb offers him a small smile, and nods. “Ja ja go ahead and poke around, though I do not think I am anywhere as interesting as you.”

Now given permission, the mermaid flashes Caleb a smile, one that is all sharp, pointed teeth, Caleb notes, before he turned towards Caleb’s feet. One of his boots must have been lost to the waves as his left foot sits there, bare on the sand. In a flash the mermaid reaches out and grabs hold of his ankle, pulling it towards himself. The movement is so quick and so strong that Caleb is sent cerneening onto his back.

The mermaid bends his knee and rolled his ankle, and stretches his leg, making little surprised squeals as he does. Caleb has to admit, it feels a tad invasive, but also fair, somehow. Yes, it is only right that information be shared between the two of them. How often is it that two like them should cross paths, after all. This is an amazing opportunity to learn from one another. So he lets the mermaid wiggling leg about and poke at his toes and even smell his foot at one point which must have been incredibly foul if the look of utter disgust on his face is anything to go by. It makes Caleb smile. Though he lacks a voice, the mermaid is incredibly expressive, almost endearingly so. Eventually, he release Caleb’s leg, letting drop back into the surf.

“Have you finished your investigation?” he asks.

The mermaid shakes his head, no, and points at his chest.

“Are you curious how it is I breath?” he asks, excitement mounting once more. “Because I am quite fascinated by your respiratory system as well. We are hardly in more than a foot of water and yet you do not seem to be struggling at all. Maybe it is that your body is better at absorbing at maintaining oxygen? Or-”

The mermaid cuts him off with a firm shake of his head. He reaches down to tug at Caleb’s shirt, still wet and clinging to him. Caleb blinks.

“You are aah- You are interested in my clothes?”

He nods, tugging more insistently at the hem of his shirt now. Caleb can’t help but flush.

“I uhh ja I suppose that it is alright. It is nothing special though, just a shirt,,,,”

Certainly this is all in the name of science, he tells himself, even as the mermaid tugs his shirt open enough to expose his chest. Even if he feels a bit self conscious as the mermaid runs a hand curiously over the hair peeking out. It is in the name of good research that he drags his fingers over his clavicle and up his neck to his jaw where a fine layer of scruff is starting to grow in, making little noises of surprise as he does. Turning Caleb's jaw and leaning in close, so close that Caleb can see the moisture on his skin. It’s scientific, completely and utterly scientific.

But even science has his limits and when the mermaid starts to tug at the waistband of his trousers, he all but leaps up, batting the others hand away.

Nien nien umm - I would prefer if you didn’t um- there” he says quickly, his face bright crimson.

The mermaid raises his hands up in surrender, confused, its seems, but apologetic.

Caleb lets out a shaky sigh, pushing the hair back from his face. “It’s alright, I do not blame you for your curiosity but ahhh- if you are really interested in- down there, Im sure I have some books on- on that,,,,”

The mermaid nods slowly, pressing a finger to his mouth. He then twists around so that his long, vibrantly colored tail comes to lay across Caleb’s lap. He flicks his fingers at him as if to say ‘go on’. Caleb chuckles shyly, and shakes his head.

“Nein, danken but no. That is alright. Getting to meet you has been ahh- has been a wonderful experience in itself. I am only sorry I was not able to learn your name. Unless,,,” he trails off, reaching a hand into the back pocket of his trousers and producing a small book wrapped in leather.

He’d thought it unnecessary when Beaurgard had gifted him the waterproof slip for his journal but now he could not be happier to have had it. He slips it out from it case and undoes the cord. The mermaid leans in close, watching him thumb through the mostly dry pages.

“Perhaps there is something in here that will help you to tell me your name.” he says, holding the book out so his companion can see the pages as well.

He turns them slowly, watching the mermaid’s face carefully for any signs of recognition. After a dozen pages or so, he presses a finger into the page, pointing at a sketch of an albatross.

“Albatross?” Caleb asks. Certainly a strange name but who is he to judge. The mermaid shakes his head. “Gull?” Caleb tries. Another no. He runs a hand thoughtfully over his beard. “Mollymauk perhaps?”

The mermaid nods furiously, pointing at the drawing again, and then at himself.

“Mollymauk” Caleb says slowly and Mollymauk beams. “That is a very nice name. It has been very nice getting to know you, Mollymauk.”

#midnigtwrites #widomauk #wm mermaid au #dont @ me im tender

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grimmseye · 4 years

Text

A Bird in the Hand: Chapter Six

Read on Ao3 here!

Rating: T

Fandom: Critical Role

Relationships: Mollymauk Tealeaf/Essek Thelyss, Mollymauk Tealeaf/Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast (eventual)

Chapter Characters: Mollymauk Tealeaf, Essek Thelyss

Chapter Tags/Warnings: Molly Rez, Amnesiac Mollymauk, Oh My God They Were Roommates, Existential Topics, Essek getting excited by both Mollymauk and his weird magic, Mention of Torture (in literally like the first sentence)

— — —

The scars littering Mollymauk's body weren't a result of torture, as Essek had first assumed. Blood magic was still fairly taboo, but he knew it had its merits. The life force was a powerful source of magic, and drawing blood was safer than drawing directly from the soul.

Most blood magic came in alteration and control. One could use their own blood to change themself, to augment their power by manipulating the force that defined them. Or, they could take another's essence, claim it and use it to collar its source. Blood made scrying simple and curses into child's play. It was a very useful component, and Essek preferred to stay quiet about his own applications of it.

What Mollymauk did, he theorized, had to do with sacrifice. There was power in that, too. The giving-up, the exchange of something to gain, or to take from another, was a form of magic that dated back to its most ancient roots. Before there was wizardry, druids, artificers, those who learned their craft and honed it through study and training, there were those who made pacts with something else.

The question then became what Mollymauk was sacrificing to. A god, a demon, a devil? Or simply to the Weave itself, using his blood as the guidelines to tangle its threads in new formations.

It was all very exciting.

So was watching Mollymauk, though he was ashamed to admit it. He hadn't asked the tiefling to undress, but Mollymauk had been more than happy to divest himself of his shirt. It left him in loose pants, the material fluttering in the cool wind that blew past. He'd taken up blades in Essek's backyard at Essek's own request. One of his swords was wet with his blood, and illuminated with a radiant glow.

The radiance took a point away from Mollymauk contacting of the negative planes, though Essek knew better than to negate it completely. Tieflings had infernal heritages, it was entirely possible that all the oddities of Mollymauk's body were tied to a single source. It was doubtful, but it was also worth noting.

Essek did just that, writing down his thoughts, knowing he'd be glad to have them later. A stream of consciousness on a page was better than neat and tidy notes that lacked detail and most importantly context. He seethed when thinking of the number of projects he'd had to abandon all because he hadn't marked down a late-night thought.

"You have another of these, you said," Essek prompted. "The other sword does not use radiance?" It was difficult to look at the blade directly with its sunlit glow.

Mollymauk twirled one scimitar with an idle air, catching it in his palm. "Yeah. Ice for that one."

Essek moved forward, wanting a close look. He muttered a word, burning the first-level slot to sharpen his gaze to magic. "Activate it, please."

Without missing a beat, Molly obeyed. It made his insides shiver to see the blade come up, cutting neatly into his skin. It was shallow and precise, drawing a scarlet line along the edge of the blade that beaded and dripped over Mollymauk's collar. Molly held it still against his chest for Essek to watch as the blood crystallized, frost crawling over the surface of the blade. It was evocation that brought the ice to the surface, and that brimmed off the blade's glowing twin.

A hint of necromancy burned in Molly's blood, and suddenly Essek had the thought: what would he find if he drew some from Mollymauk's veins, was the blood under his skin inherently magical was he built from necrotic energy, he'd crawled his way out of a grave so what did that make him. Surely he wasn't undead, or the way magic interacted with him would change, the spells Essek had cast on him wouldn't work, but he couldn't count as mortal, either.

So what on earth was Mollymauk Tealeaf? The question had a giddy sensation roiling up in his stomach.

"What's up with your eyes?" Mollymauk asked, and Essek blinked back to himself.

It took a moment to remember what he meant. The spell gave his eyes a kaleidoscopic appearance, reflecting colors that shifted madly in the presence of magic. "Ah. I cast a spell on myself, it lets me sense magic in the vicinity. Do you know about the different schools of magic?"

Mollymauk closed his eyes, arms swinging at his sides so the sword blades dragged in the dirt. "... No," he concluded, with a definitive nod. "I really don't know shit about magic as a whole. I don't know why or how this happens, but cutting myself makes my swords fancy."

Essek remembered the way blood had burst in a gnoll's eyes, blinding them, making the snap of their jaws only seize the air. "Is there anything else you can do?" He pressed.

Mollymauk gave him a long, withering look, and snorted. "Wizards. They tell you I know a place and then spend the time quizzing you about your blood curses. Yeah, if I cut a bit deeper, I can affect other... things. People, monsters, whatever. It's only temporary, but it can be enough in a pinch. If someone's about to get run through with a sword..."

Mollymauk's gaze went distant. His breath hitched, and he lifted a hand, putting it on the ragged scar on his chest. "It might be enough to throw them off."

Essek let him linger, uncertain what had captured his mind but hoping that maybe this would help unlock the rest of his memories. If he could return Mollymauk to the Nein, safe and happy and just as they'd found him, then maybe he could relieve the weight of his guilt. If bad and good were opposites, then surely if he just did enough good, that would eventually outweigh the bad.

He knew that logic was flawed. If that were the case, then the teleportations would have eased the pressure. But that was small, not necessarily easy for him but simple enough, something he could do for anyone. This was different. This was special. This would mean something, and then he could be forgiven, even if they never knew of his betrayal.

Eventually, clarity returned to Mollymauk's eyes. He shook himself, his expression pensive and tail coiling. Essek prompted him with a quirk of the eyebrow. Each time this happened, there was the hope that maybe he was fixed at last. And as was true each previous time, it didn't seem to be so — Mollymauk only gave a yawn and stretched his arms out, mindless of the blades he held. "So, yeah. Blood curses. Can't exactly demonstrate them without a target, though."

Essek sighed, but let himself be swept into a new focus. In time, he soothed himself. Mollymauk would regain his mind in time. Regardless, letting the memories filter back gradually seemed to treat Mollymauk better than forcing the issue, even if Essek was still looking for a more direct way to unlock those memories.

He tapped his own temple, refocusing. What Mollymauk said was true, there wasn't a target to use for a demonstration. Unless —

"You said the effects were temporary," Essek checked.

Mollymauk gave a shrug. "Far as I've seen."

"No lasting effects?" The question got him a shake of the head, as expected. Magic usually wore off without a trace. To call Mollymauk's abilities a curse was likely a stronger word than was accurate, too small and too brief to qualify. Curses clung and festered, even a blindness spell was likely to have more effect than what Mollymauk could do — except that it wouldn't come through in a split-second of need, by the time Essek was finished pulling his components and conjuring the sigils in his mind, a sword would be through Mollymauk's chest, through Caleb's, through Jester's.

Life for life. Perhaps it was a more equal exchange than he'd believed.

"In that case..." Essek drew the words out, giving himself a moment longer to consider. "Target me."

Mollymauk's face contorted into bewilderment. "Are you sure?" He prompted.

"As long as what you said is true, and the effect is only temporary, then yes." Even if the thought did make his skin prickle, remembering how blood spurted around the eyes. He wondered how badly it would hurt. Essek could fight, but it did not mean he was comfortable with pain. Not like Mollymauk.

The tiefling shrugged, shifting his weight between each hoof. "Ready?" He asked. Then he broke out into a sudden grin, saying, "Honestly this is weird. It's always a split-second thing for me, I've hardly had to think about it."

"Would it help if I attempted to strike you?" Essek pulled a curl of ice between his fingers, crystalizing purple magic that was so dark it bordered on black. Mollymauk watched the movement of his fingers, teeth sinking into his lower lip as he grinned.

"Talented hands," Mollymauk commented, and then cleared his throat. "But uh. You know what? Fuck it, why not. Give me your best shot, Thelyss."

Mollymauk slunk back, and the shift to his posture held Essek's gaze where it didn't belong. Mollymauk typically held himself lofty and large, filling up the space around him. That meant this change made for a captivating view, to watch as he became a serpentine creature, one who curled one way to the other and then lunged in to strike. He wasn't attacking Essek, though, was only on defense, swaying in place with a hypnotic flow.

Essek watched him, biding his time, a stalemate. He counted the seconds, learned the pattern of Mollymauk's weight, found the point when he'd struggle to shift his movement and then —

Crimson splashed in his vision. Essek gasped, a hand flying to his face as the burn began to settle in at the corners of his eyes. Blood trickled from his tear ducts in heavy drops, sticky as they rolled down his cheeks. The sensation was nauseating.

Necromancy, he recalled. That had been the magic that flashed the second before he lost his vision. He cleaned the blood away with a few casts of prestidigitation, blinking his eyes to find Mollymauk standing much closer with streaks of blood on his own cheeks, and not so much as a speck of frost on his skin.

"Handy trick," Mollymauk commented, as the blood wicked off of Essek's skin. "You mind...?"

He swallowed his nausea, saying, "Of course." Essek cupped Mollymauk's jaw, sliding his thumb across his cheek to where the peacock feather was inked to clear the blood away. He only realized a moment later he hadn't actually needed to touch Mollymauk.

"Thank you," Mollymauk all but purred, and Essek would swear the tiefling pressed into his hand before he pulled it away.

He drew in a breath, and as he let it out he forced his muscles to unwind. "Thank you," Essek returned. "I have some interesting points to consider from that."

"Oh, yeah?"

A smirk twitched at the corner of his lips. "You wouldn't understand it." It wasn't meant as an insult. Or, perhaps it was a bit of an insult, but mostly just a statement of fact.

"True enough," Mollymauk shrugged, and to Essek's disappointment, he didn't bother prying.

In the distance, the sky began to change. The change in the light was enough to draw both their gazes. The clouds that cast the city in darkness had begun to spiral open, an eye dilating over the Bright Queen's palace to let in a light that made Essek wince even from so far away.

"I suppose we will have to pause this," Essek said, turning away to head into the house. "I prefer not to willingly blind myself."

"Please think about what you just said," Mollymauk drawled as he trotted up beside him, tail flicking against the back of Essek's calf.

He had to snort. "You have something of a point, but that was performed as apart of an experiment. Learning, studying, improving, not just..." He stopped himself and just huffed out a breath.

"Oh?" He could hear the smirk in Mollymauk's voice. "That means something."

Essek considered how honest he wanted to be here. Mollymauk was not a subtle individual — to call him such would likely be considered an insult. In that same vein, Molly had shown little if any regard for social norms and standards, often to a frustrating extent. "I am only frustrated," he said. "What you see there is apart of worship of... something they do not understand, and treat as a deity because of that."

"Lot's of folks don't understand me but I've yet to be treated like a god. Shame," Mollymauk sighed. "So it's some kinda ceremony? They wouldn't be having a festival, would they?" His expression lit up.

Essek actually felt bad dashing his hopes. "No, it is not the kind of ceremony you would want to partake in," he said. "It is... reverent, to an alarming degree."

"Wrong: I'd love partake in that — just as long as I'm the center of attention." Mollymauk's comment dragged another chuckle from Essek's chest. He'd been laughing more in general, since meeting the Nein. It followed that one of their early members would be much the same.

Mollymauk continued, "Really, though, what's going on? You conjured a big spooky cloud to keep the sun out, didn't you?"

"You have not heard of our Beacons yet, have you?" Essek prompted. They stepped across the threshold, Essek drawing the curtains that ideally would have only been for decoration.

"I've heard 'em mentioned?" Mollymauk shrugged. "That's — lemme guess, beacon of light?"

"That is the idea, yes." Essek lowered himself into a chair, while Mollymauk all but threw himself into another. He wrinkled his nose as the furniture creaked under the tiefling's weight. "There are these... dodecahedrons. They were found, and so were some of their properties. They found that when one is consecuted — I would say attuned, but they use consecute — their soul enters this Beacon upon death, to be reincarnated at a later time."

As Essek explained the beacons to Mollymauk, the tiefling's gaze grew distant. Snippets of conversation pulled to mind, pieces falling into place for Essek. He nipped his own criticisms of the practice short, circling around to say, "That is reason why your friends are so revered in the Dynasty. They —"

"We found one," Mollymauk interrupted. His voice was distracted. "No. We met in the sewers — Thuron."

The name pinged in Essek's mind, one of those sent to retrieve a beacon. He hummed, quiet and prompting, not wanting to break Mollymauk's reverie.

"He was killed. The guards took it, but we —" A smile pulled at his lips. "Caleb and Nott, those fucking bastards. Can't trust either of them, clever assholes'll stab you in the back at the first sniff of trouble."

Essek swallowed a protest as Mollymauk trailed into silence. Molly's brow furrowed and he shook his head, a hand coming up to cover one eye. "Gods," Mollymauk groaned. "So we'd been lugging around your god in a lead box."

"Allegedly," Essek couldn't stop himself from breaking in. He bit back any further words, but the moment had passed. Clarity returned to Mollymauk's gaze. He gave it a moment before continuing, "I have my doubts that it is any sort of deity. I think they need to be studied, not worshiped. By I am in the... extreme minority, in that regard. And I would prefer these words not be repeated."

Mollymauk gave him a crooked, tired smile. "What's a little blasphemy between friends, Mister Thelyss? And honestly, I don't blame you. That reincarnation thing, that sounds like a nightmare."

The words were alien enough to shock Essek. He cocked his head, leaning forward. "You wouldn't want to be consecuted, given the chance?"

When Mollymauk only scrunched up his nose he added, "Theoretical immortality. Death is no longer an object of fear, as it becomes a delay, not an end. That doesn't appeal to you?"

By his expression, it definitely did not. Molly's voice was rough when he spoke. "What you said about how the souls... awaken. What about the person they would have been? Is it really even their soul, or are they just suppressing someone else? I wouldn't..." Mollymauk pulled his legs up, tail curling around his shins as he rested his chin on his knees. He looked small, in that moment. His voice shook. His eyes were wide. "I don't want anyone else's memories. I don't want anyone else's thoughts."

Essek stood up. The movement was sudden enough to snap Mollymauk out of it, leaving him blinking at Essek with wide red eyes. He wracked his brain for something to say, a way to interrupt this descent, and landed on Caduceus' voice: "Would you like some tea?"

Mollymauk stared at him. Then he laughed, hoarse, and pushed himself to his hooves. "Sure," he croaked. "But there's not a chance in all the hells that I'm letting you make it."

They were silent as they moved to the kitchen, Essek standing begrudgingly aside to let Mollymauk make a mess of things. He was a good cook, but hardly a considerate one.

And maybe it was poking the sleeping owlbear, but Essek couldn't deny the questions that lingered on his tongue. "It would, theoretically, still be you," he said. "And who is to say that the person you become is not influenced by the person you were."

Mollymauk snapped his head to look over his shoulder, pinning Essek to the spot with a near-snarl. With teeth bared and ears pinned low, he looked a beat away from outright snarling in Essek's face. Then the fight drained from him. He breathed a sigh through the nostrils, drawing himself upright as he poured water into a kettle. "I am the last person to yuck anyone's yum," Mollymauk said. "If someone wants to go body hopping to the end of time, they can be my guest. But I want no part of that. It's just not for me."

Essek hesitated before dipping his head in a nod, even if Mollymauk couldn't see. "That is fair," he murmured. "I do not think it is for me, either."

"You were pretty pushy about it." Molly clicked his fingers at Essek and pointed to the stove. Essek just sighed and touched the runes, igniting a fire for him to set the kettle atop.

"You can do that on your own. Regardless, I was curious," Essek said, leaning back against the counter. "You are so against having another person's memories, but you want your own back. What is the difference there?"

"It just is." Molly started taking out the tea — all of it, in tins and bags and boxes. Most were blends that Caduceus had given him, but some came in his grocery order. Essek hardly understood the difference between them all. As Mollymauk worked, his tail lashed. It would betray his agitation if the tension in his voice hadn't already. "It feels different. Right now I'm missing pieces of myself. Those people, your people, the Nein, they're important. I don't know why, but they just are. But there was something before them."

Mollymauk turned, the anger in his face now resembling fear. Dread, maybe, or horror. It left him pale and clutching the edge of the counter, looking at Essek like he expected him to sprout fangs and lung for him. "There was something else, and I don't want it. This is my body now, my life. He gave it up. He doesn't get to take it back."

Essek remembered the haunted sheen in Molly's eyes when he'd called him by a different name.

Mollymauk.

Lucien.

"If that is true," Essek said, giving up on any further inquisition, "then you have nothing to worry about. He is... whoever he is. And you are you. You cannot become him."

It didn't work that way. He was making a statement with no backing, barely even understood what it was Mollymauk feared so terribly. But whatever he'd said, it seemed to work, with Mollymauk's shoulders going loose and a sigh expelling from his chest. "Yeah," he puffed. "Yeah that makes sense. Good thinking, Mister Thelyss."

"I am... happy to be a help to you."

And though it was said with a dryness in his voice, Essek found the words rang true.

#Mollymauk Tealeaf #Essek Thelyss #shadowmauk #cr #cr fic #my writing #a bird in the hand

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itsomgitsgreenblogging · 4 years

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Sleepless in Zadash: A Critical Role Fanfic

So...I know this is @essek-week, but who better to appreciate Essek than Caleb? Honestly for today I was half tempted to just reblog my Bakery AU fic Labor of Love (which you can read on AO3, all about a buisnessman!Essek falling in love with the owner of a cute magic bakery). But you know, I had this kicking around in my WIP document, and it fit with the Wine Concept, so I hope you enjoy it!

All I have to say besides this is...there was only one bed

Read the collection on AO3

Caleb sighed as he watched his phone slowly but surely climb up from a measly 2% to 5%. His back was nearly plastered to the wall of the column, squeezed awkwardly between two rows of seats. Crowds of equally stranded passengers moved throughout the airport, trying to find some sort of slice of area to set up for the long wait. Based on the snowstorm that continued to rage outside, frosting the large windows and icing the wings of the planes, Caleb guessed they would all be there for some time.

His phone began buzzing and flashing, Nott’s face flashed with her teeth in a wide expressive smile. Caleb picked up the phone.

“Hallo,” Caleb answered.

“Caleb! Are you alright!” Nott’s shrill tone went straight to his heart. “Where are you right now?”

“We stopped in Zadash, I was supposed to get my connection here but it isn’t looking like that’s going to happen any time soon,” Caleb said with a wince. He looked over to the Dwendalian Air desk, which was in the process of being mobbed by irate customers. “The desk is going to announce the information at some point if no one murders them.”

“What the fuck!” Beauregard’s voice echoed from the background.

“That really is unfortunate,” Caduceus chimed in.

“Are you going to be able to get somewhere to sleep?” Fjord asked worriedly.

“I figured I would just rough it at the airport,” Caleb said, curling his legs towards his chest before flexing them out. “I’ve slept in worse places.”

“We’ll come get you!” Nott nearly shouted into his ear, Caleb had to momentarily move the phone away from his ears. Someone sitting in a nearby seat shot him a dirty look, obviously having been startled out of sleep, before getting up and moving in a huff. Caleb gave them an apologetic look before refocusing on the chatter on the other end of the phone.

“It’ll be like a super fun road trip!” Jester chirped.

“No, no. That’s like three whole days, and very dangerous because of the snow. I’m sure we’ll be out of here by tomorrow anyways,” Caleb promised.

“Well that fucking blows. Do definitely try to get a hotel or something man, I’m sure they have to give you something for the layover,” Beau said practically.

“He probably won’t, because it’s Dwendalian Air, and life’s a fucking nightmare!” Jester sang cheerfully, and Caleb couldn’t help his grin.

“He could kill them,” Yasha’s soft voice offered. “The people behind the desk.”

“No, that definitely would not work under any circumstances,” Fjord pointed out.

“It was a joke, mostly,” Yasha said, her quiet laugh making Caleb smile.

“Alright, I’ll let you know where I am and what is going on,” Caleb promised.

“Bye Caleb!” “Bye Cay-Cay!” “Good luck!”

Caleb hung up the phone, tapping on the cracked screen. 10%. Caleb sighed, and slid further down on the wall. He continued to watch the waves of people, mostly their feet considering his angle. He liked counting and organizing, it was something that came natural and was always soothing despite the situation. Heels, sneakers, winter boots, light-up and glitter, black and brown, a myriad of types, black oxfords as shiny as a new copper--

A wallet dropped behind the oxfords. Caleb ripped his phone and cord out from the wall and rushed to grab the wallet.

“Hey! Wait!” Caleb barely managed, breathless in his panic. He couldn’t imagine being stuck at an airport, and losing your wallet on top of that. Just that panic alone propelled Caleb forward. “Your wallet!”

Black-shiny-oxfords turned around and it hit Caleb in the gut. He was the most handsome man Caleb had ever laid eyes on in his whole life. He was drow, like many of the professors who guest lectured at Soltryce University from Roshanna College, but had the distinct pleasure of being probably the most obviously attractive person Caleb had ever seen before. He was all high aristocratic cheekbones and delicate silver eyes and curly coiffed styled hair. He was wearing a meticulously pressed black suit tailored to match his whole aesthetic, like he would drift from the airport and onto a fashion magazine cover.

He patted his pocket, before holding out a leather-gloved hand. He plucked his wallet from Caleb’s hand delicately.

“Thank you so much,” shiny-oxfords said with a smile that made Caleb feel like he was having heart palpitations. His voice was smooth with a lilting Xhorhassian accent that added such a depth of flavor to him, and there was something so desirable and timeless about him...as if he were a vintage of wine that never went out of style. It poured over him like it was worth 100 gold a glass. "If I lost this, I would have been in some trouble."

“Uh, yes, of course,” Caleb cringed, and shiny-oxfords immediately pulled up out of the way of an orc yanking his entire family’s carry on’s on his back. His touch, even through his glove, had Caleb jumping like he had been shocked. “Sorry, sorry.”

“It’s alright,” shiny-oxfords said eyeing the hurrying family with distaste before looking back at Caleb, “which flight were you supposed to be on?”

“Connection to Trostenwald,” Caleb said, managing to collect himself and hoping beyond all hope he wasn’t too obvious in his desire to drink this fashionable, beautiful stranger’s presence down for all it was worth.

“Same,” shiny-oxfords said, looking at his phone. "Though I was hoping to make it to Nicodranas from there. Just got an alert, flight cancelled."

"Oh, sheisse," Caleb groaned, looking at his own phone. The same notification had popped up on his.

"Do you have somewhere to stay tonight?" Shiny-oxfords asked worriedly.

"I was just going to...you know sleep here," Caleb said with a helpless shrug.

"Well, I have enough International Inn points and I made a reservation to stay the night at the Pillow Trove when it looked like things were turning sour. Consider this a thank you gift from me."

"Oh, you don't have to," Caleb tried to argue.

"No, I do not," shiny-oxfords said simply. Caleb stared at shiny-oxfords. "But it is the right thing to do considering you kept me from getting arrested as a Xhorhassian national at a Dwendalian border without a passport."

"Oh," Caleb said dumbly.

"I am Essek Theylss," he said, holding out his hand like his name meant something and Caleb took it dumbfounded.

"Caleb Widogast," he introduced.

"It is a pleasure," he said as if it were easy being the classiest person in this place. "Let's get our bags."

They had to wait an obscenely long amount of time to get their bags. And by the time they did, Caleb was perfectly fine to skip the line for the dinner ticket that he was sure wouldn't even work. They managed to get out of the airport, Caleb waving over a cab from the dozens that crowded the stand like birds huddling together against the snow. He opened the door for Essek after they loaded their bags into the back, eliciting another quirked half-grin from him that had Caleb flushed like he had downed a whole bottle. Caleb had only ever been to the Pillow Trove once, on a weekend in one room with the rest of the Mighty Nein. He wasn't proud to say that they got absolutely wasted on the liquor and cheap wine in the mini fridge, and when you were that drunk it was easy to feel like you belonged anywhere. However while being totally sober he knew he was absolutely out of place here amongst the crystal chandeliers and marble floors.

The lady at the front desk gave Caleb an incredulous once over, before focusing squarely on Essek. Drow were rare...and generally still unwelcome, but considering how much his clothes nearly stank of money she put on her best congenial smile.

"Reservation for Theylss," Essek said, flipping out a black credit card and an ID. The lady looked over the ID long and hard, though Essek continued to smile placidly. Eventually, she seemed appeased, though Caleb fought his glare.

"Of course," she said, typing out very quickly on her computer. "We have a one bedroom available on the fifteenth floor. It comes with a pull out."

"That will work," Essek stated before looking over at Caleb. "Sound fine to you?"

"Yes, better than fine," Caleb said, hitching his duffle bag more firmly on his shoulder. He had balanced his messenger bag on the other, while holding Essek's rolling bag. Essek flashed another grateful look at him.

"Very well, two keys please," Essek asked, and though it looked like it physically hurt the woman she coughed up the two keycards.

They were down the hallway and up the elevator. Caleb counted the doors as they passed until they finally made it to the room. The room itself was spacious and well furnished, with a queen sized bed, a love seat and the pull out by the window with a small round table. The window itself was wide, and gave a beautiful view of the city that was still being pelted with snow. Caleb dropped his bags on the door side of the room, nestled by the closet.

“I will be happy to take the pullout,” Caleb offered weakly, turning to his new roommate who smiled in an obvious attempt to placate him.

“Nonsense. I only need to trance for four hours, you take the bed,” Essek said with a wave of his hand. “A Theylss always returns a favor, if I didn’t my family would have my head.”

“Then let me at least buy you something downstairs...dinner perhaps?” Caleb asked, surprised at his own daring. “And a good bottle of wine for the trouble.”

“We can split the bottle then,” Essek said, his smile this time showing fangs. “And I doubt that any of this will be trouble for me. Come along then, Mr. Widogast. Dinner, wine, and then bed.”

Caleb really did like the sound of that.

#critical role #critical role fanfic #Essek Week #shadowgast #caleb widogast #essek theylss

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yfere · 5 years

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Shipping Calculus! Live Updates from C2E66(6)

A MASSIVE SHIPPING FEAST ON BOTH ENDS OF THE SPECTRUM this episode, hot DAMN. Thank you to @alarnia and @softazelma for helping with data entry. Masterpost here. I just...I don’t even have words, I’m too busy soaring.

-5 to Fjord/Jester unlike Fjord, as these two unfortunately give us a Complete Guide on how to Lose All The Battle Points—Fjord accidentally ditching Jester to get mauled by a winged monster for the third time in a row as he is Contractually Obligated to do, and Jester getting her own back by polymorphing the roc just as Fjord settled on its back, sending our dear warlock plummeting towards an early—and painful—landing. The hemorrhaging to the ship was mostly patched up by both of them being very regretful over the whole situation, Jester saying “sorry” a billion and one times, and so on. Then they dip back into point loss with Fjord Completely Failing To Be On The Wavelength when it comes to disguising as leaves, participating in dance parties, not making people exhausted with a hard ride on the moorbounders through the night, etc etc, but these were largely made up for by Jester’s appreciation for Fjord paying for their inn stay, his continued helpfulness with Sending, and most importantly Jester taking every opportunity to point out how RIPPED and TOUGH and SMART and GOOD AT ACCENTS Fjord is as he flexes for her benefit. Overall, a rollercoaster week, but we at the lab feel it balances to point loss when you factor in the massive physical toll these two took on each other, and not in the fun way. They can do better (the fun way, for instance)

+20 to Jester/Caduceus as these two show us Battle Points Done Right, with Jester casting an insect plague in the most Caduceus of moves, and NOT ONLY THAT, but making them an Oprah BEES gif, recalling the most Iconic of Jester/Cads scenes, and the most Iconic Jester Ship Mascot, comparable only to jellyfish. Caduceus calling Jester a “sugar pea” and making her squeal and hug him, a type of #BodyContact which earns the most possible points without lips being involved. Dancing with Jester and having a grand old time. Them earning Battle Points?????? with their protracted bat-catching session, and Caduceus using literally all of his Banes so that the itty creature never so much as nicks Jester. That’s love.

+10 to Nott/Cat Shaped Creatures Speaking of lip involvement, Frumpkin got a kiss from Nott before being let down!!! Caleb better watch out, or she’ll steal his cat right out from under him!! Massive point loss however for Jannick yeeting Nott off of him for daring to ride alone, because Caleb’s precious pets are nothing if not loyal. (that’s a +15 to Caleb/Cat Shaped Creatures right there!)

+37 to Fjord/Caduceus These two have their strongest week YET, with Fjord—voluntarily! opening up about the Wildmother, and Caduceus giving some amazing advice about meditation which lets Fjord get more peaceful sleep to ASMR ocean sounds! Caduceus talking about a “shining beautiful” destiny (always a point earner!), and opening up about HIS Wildmother dreams and past and quests as well! Caduceus saying he has faith in Fjord—though there’s some point loss as Caduceus seems to have joined Nott’s “There is Evil in the Fjord Club” by implying it’s only his good friendships keeping him on the straight and narrow, smh Caduceus. Cads adorably suggesting that they can ALSO stop in the abyssal temple before they leave town if that’s what Fjord wants, like visiting a gift shop. Caduceus as usual being the first to Fjord’s side for That Good Hjealing and Emotional Sjupport, which Fjord petulantly demands, and Fjord encouragingly saying “C’mon, baby” as Caduceus looks around for the pursuing roc. In the Creepy Tunnels, Caleb gets +2 to Cockblocking as Fjord wanted to be the one to help Caduceus out, but Caleb gets the honor. Later Cads helps Fjord look for magical arms and armor though, that’s pretty sweet.

+42 to Jester/Yasha LOVE??? LOVE WAS SAID????? ANNNND THEY HUGGED?!?!?!?!?! The “we” puts ever so slight a damper on things, but that is a Point Earner right there, with a lovely conversation about being Yasha’s New Family and defending her from anything that would upset her. Yasha getting teary, saying Jessie once more and making a joke about the king’s instrument being a rock harp, like….they are love?? Love?????? AND, annnnnnnd they get the Sexy Points for “Comes more with another person” HOW DO YOU KNOW THIS JESTER I’M LOVsjkajkgakajksakjkasjksajkfukewk;HA;GKJ BKfjkcbdjabkjsdbalkbB SJAK BKJBSAKJK;jkjdasbjksbjkdakasdsfnajdknmbznb

-1 to Beau/Pets While she gets point gains for charming a baby roc with some staff scritches and thrown food, she gets point loss for beaning the poor baby with that same staff, though luckily she doesn’t join Nott in the Baby Killing Club of this campaign. -1 to Caleb/Vulture Culture as despite using all of his spells to Live a Bird-Brained Life, he unfortunately drops his form too quickly to save Fjord, gets bit back to wizard form by the baby roc and told to shut up with the bird screeching by Beau. But Frumpkin gains some points for looking successfully for the pursuing roc.

-20 to Nott/Yasha You get the sense that Nott is trying to mend things with Yasha, but it always falls apart and falls apart horribly. “We’re safe in this smoke” leads to Yasha immediately leaving it, and after Nott has her flask taken she spends the rest of the episode talking about how shady and suspicious Yasha is which even Caleb “Nott is Never Wrong” Widogast can’t agree with. Searching the darling barbarian’s pockets and accusing her until Yasha gets fed up and yells that she didn’t FUCKING take it.

+15 to Beau/Yasha/Jester as they have another stellar week. Featuring Classic Threesome Moments, including “Should I give you some private time alone?” with both Beau and Yasha Very Much Wanting Her To Stay, and Jester sharing the Sugar Momma loveliness she’d been having with Beau with Yasha, in the form of a suggestive ring gifting joke and “dressing Yasha up” in the fancy clothing Beau recovered for the both of them. The three of them touching the stone Celestials and listening to their music

+17 to Beau/Yasha *starts singing Beyonce* she liked it, so she put a ring on it! ‘Nuff said. Beau’s terribly awkward but wonderful “We’ll protect you with our lives” also: goooooooooooooooooooooooood. Beau being incredibly worried over using Yasha as bait, more worried over dead Celestials, but forging ahead because they both know it’s the best option they have at the moment *sniffs* it’s Some Angst Here. Beau saying Yasha has “dope wings” and might be a “dope angel in irons” and suggesting that Yasha may have gotten her name by sleeping with a lot of people, the sheer dumbassery of which makes Yasha facepalm herself in the hopes of getting a Lesbian Amnesia concussion.

+20 to Beau/Jester as Dimension Door gets used once more for an incredibly sapphic and beautiful moment. Beau grabs onto Jester to try to throw her to safety, but stays when Jester asks, and Jester getting them both to safety?? Dare I say, Romance? Dancing together, loving shiny loot together, running their hands along the side of the tunnel and detectiving together. Beau saying Jester is pretty awesome, as always!

+4 to Fjord/Cowboy Vibes as for one glorious moment, he was yeehaw riding that roc. Alas.

+11 to Caleb/Fjord. Although a sincere effort was made, these two did not in fact earn any Battle Points as Caleb’s furious handwringing, running around, and smacking faulty cocoons and tossing feathers repeatedly failed to help Fjord out of his situation with the roc—only acting as a feathery transport to a cleric managed to do the poor man any good. Nonetheless, these two continued to Same Hat on planning as usual, going full speed (or not at all) with the moorbounders, Caleb directing Fjord towards Facely duties but admirably performing on some Facely duties himself when they first roll into town and get the side-eye. Fjord as always being Very Attuned to Caleb’s navigational skills, wanting to know what direction they’re going and wanting Caleb to do translation duty. Being excellent detective partners as they have been since the circus in identifying bodies and bones together. Point loss for Fjord apparently thinking that the best way to get Caleb’s attention is to throw an eldritch blast in the vicinity of his cat instead of, say, shaking him or something. Fjord…….when are you going to be nice to other people’s pets? Will you ever?

+1 to Caleb/Essik “But of course you must know of THIS EXTREMELY FAMOUS AND HANDSOME MAN ESSIK THEYLAS who will ABSOLUTELY VOUCH FOR US, IN FACT PLEASE ASK HIM TO I NEED AN EXCUSE TO TALK TO HIM.”

+5 to Jester/Graffiti as she pulls off a difficult prank in changing the sign to the “Ruddy Poon” in full view of the whole community. One of her weaker jokes of the episode, though, so less point gain.

+3 to The Mighty Nein/Oban as he’s apparently super impressed with how quickly and trustworthily they brought Yasha to the area. Compliments Jester on her singing skills. He must be a good guy then, right? Right?

-4 to Nott/Jester for Nott claiming erroneously that rocs eat leaves to Jester, absolutely wanting Jester to “waste” a spell looking for her missing flask (that Jester stole). Point gains for Jester casting lesser restoration on Nott and worrying about her alcoholism and recklessness to a heartbreaking degree….but unfortunately, balancing out to point loss considering the physical and emotional toll her thievery resulted in as Nott panicks and takes out her feelings on the rest of the party. We at the lab live in fear on what will happen once Nott discovers who IS responsible

+14 to Caleb/Jester she…..makes him laugh???? A rare accomplishment for which There Must Surely Be a Medal??? This alone earns All The Points for an Iconic Moment, but Caduceus gets +7 to Cockblocking for being the one Eagle Caleb carts around when the offer was originally extended to Jester. Caleb also catching onto Jessie (thank you Nott for this nickname I despise) and looking soft at everything she does, and dancing, and being the first to adorably compare Jester to a snap pea. Caleb agreeing with Jester that building bridges sounds nice. Point loss for Jester making far too much fun of Caleb for not knowing her demon stories and not seeing the obelisk, prompting him to weakly defend himself that he’s “doing his best.” More point loss for Caleb also pushing to ride the moorbounders to exhaustion, and just ignoring Jester’s “feelings” to talk to Caduceus, showing a lack of trust that is UNACCEPTABLE.

-500 to Nott/Alcohol Which needs no explanation.

+16 to Caleb/Caduceus as these boys get Good Quality Time, with Caleb flying Caduceus around everywhere, Caduceus continuing to think Caleb Magic is the Solution to Everything by suggesting alarms at the cave entrance and seeking out Caleb’s cat-based assistance three billion times. Caleb asking for Caduceus’ opinion and feelings specifically for guidance on what they should do, also thinking Caduceus Magic is the Solution to Everything by asking for a detect magic which Caduceus could not provide. Once more very emphatically forbidding Caduceus from wasting his spell slots on Daylight, because like a #KnightInShiningArmor Caleb wants to chivalrously cast that spell himself with the driftglobe. Caduceus chivalrously picking up the tab and buying incense both for himself and Caleb. Caleb holding onto Caduceus’ wrist for a full minute and proving Caduceus is a favorite for his Special Buffing Spells, because the wizard is too much of a scaredy-cat to just hold his hand, I suppose.

+20 to Everyone/Detective Work for finding gems, bones, maps, emblems, and identifying the precise coagulation of blood to determine when it was spilled! Nothing Conclusive was learned, but boy did it increase the Creepiness Factor of the episode!

-100 to The Mighty Nein/This One Particular Roc who will hold a grudge against them for the rest of time, woe unto them should they ever venture into the Barbed Fields again.

+19 to Jester/Cosplay of the Week for a much-complimented leaf disguise, and for dressing up in the bloody garb of some mauled nobles. Point loss because it was unclear to most of the judges that “leaf” is what she was going for, and not “healthy edible vegetable”

#long post #critical role #fjorester #widofjord #widojest #bashter #beauyasha #beaujester #lavorregard #nottasha #nott the best detective agency #clayvorre #clayleb #jestasha #shipping calculus #cr spoilers #shadowgast #fjorclay

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multishipperlove · 4 years

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Critical Role (Web Series) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Caleb Widogast, Beauregard Lionett, Nott (Critical Role), Caduceus Clay, Jester Lavorre, Fjord (Critical Role) Additional Tags: Yasha (mentioned) - Freeform, Molly (mentioned) - Freeform, Barren Eve, zemnian, Not Canon Compliant, I'll be honest this was just to satisfy my holiday cravings Series: Part 3 of Zemnian Roots Summary:

Caleb decides to have a mini celebration for Barren Eve. Everyone else somehow ends up joining him.

Caleb always knows what time it is. He knew the date and the month and what year it was, didn't even have to think about it. So despite the fact that they were in Xhorhas, a city where the longest night of the year does not matter because the sun never rises, he knew that today was Barren Eve.

It's a holiday he hasn't cared about for a long time. He doesn't have a reason to, after all.

But today, he feels different. It's a calm evening for once, not that that's necessarily a good sign. Caduceus is tending to his garden, Jester and Fjord are out running errands somewhere, Nott is in the laboratory working on her crossbow and Beau is- well he's not sure where Beau is. Probably in the house somewhere. But he knows they are all trying to keep busy, because if they didn't they would have to admit that they are no step further with what they are actually trying to accomplish.

There had been no lead about Yasha in the past weeks, and despite Jester's and Caduceus' best efforts she had managed to avoid every single one of their scrying attempts. So they were stuck, and everyone was trying to distract themselves. And it was Barren Eve.

With a soft sigh, Caleb closed his book. The tiny text had finally managed to give him a headache, and with his realisation of the holiday there was little hope in continuing his work. Instead he snapped his fingers, calling up Frumpkin, and letting the cat curl up in his lap.

The gentle purring sound that started up almost immediately soothed him a bit, just like the feeling of the soft fur beneath his fingers. With Frumpkin acting as a sturdy rock in stormy weather, Caleb finally allowed himself to do something very rare.

He thought back on his childhood.

Leise rieselt der Schnee Still und starr ruht der See Anmutig glänzet der Wald Freue dich, Morgen kommt bald

One Barren Eve in particular. He had still been a little boy then, not much older than four, maybe five years old. It had been the first year he'd been allowed to come to the Church of Pelor with his parents for the evening's service.

Just walking through their village that day, seeing the lights everywhere, it had been an incredible experience. The whole way from the town's centre to the church had been lined with hundreds and hundreds of candles, lighting the way for the town's people.

“A candle for every fallen soldier, now and a thousand years ago,” his father had told him, before picking him up to make sure he wouldn't vanish in the freshly fallen snow. And as they reached the church his mother had given him a copper piece, told him to pick out a candle for himself and light it, so they would have one to hold during the service.

The sermon had taken more than two hours, but Caleb had hung onto every word the priest uttered, while being securely held in his father's lap.

“Take care of your candle” “Don't let it go out” “Careful with the fire, or you will burn yourself,” he had been told, whispered to him over and over as his father helped with keeping the little stump steady in his four year old hands.

He didn't remember this part, but had been told that by the time the priest said his last words, he'd been fast asleep. Despite his excitement, his body's desire for sleep had won that day.

Letting out a breath of relief, Caleb let go of the memory and came back to the present. He could feel tear tracks down his face, and angrily wiped them away before anyone could see. He was still alone and in his own room, but also knew very well that some of his friends didn't understand the concept of knocking very well.

Before he could get lost in any other memories, he decided to get up and make his way downstairs. Maybe he would find someone else to spend some time with, instead of sitting up here alone and drowning in his own sorrow again.

With that thought in mind, it was definitely disappointing to see the living room area of the Xhorhaus empty at the moment. But he told himself it was okay, that just being in one of the common rooms was... better. Somehow. He couldn't quite explain it, but decided that it didn't matter either.

Disturbing any of the others just because he felt lonely did not seem right either, so he settled down in one of the big chairs, trying to relax again. He still felt restless though, constantly tapping his foot on the floor.

Frumpkin, who'd followed him downstairs after complaining about being dislodged from his earlier resting place, now sat in front of him and stared him down. The cat blinked once, twice, and then meowed at him, sounding accusatory.

Caleb stared back for a moment but then sighed again. “Alright, alright. Maybe you are right. But let's not make this a habit, ja.”

He got up and spend a minute or two looking around for a candle. Not just any candle, he wanted it to be at least a little bit... not pretty, necessarily. But special. He wasn't sure what would account as special in a candle, but surely that would show itself if he found the right one.

And it did, kind of. In some back-drawer in the kitchen, he finally stumbled over a little stump of a candle that he was pretty sure he'd seen Caduceus use to keep his tea warm a few times. Not unlike the one he had picked out with his single copper piece, nearly thirty years ago. Hoping that his friend wouldn't mind, he took it back to the living room with him and placed it on the little coffee table sitting right in the middle of their assortment of armchairs and sofas.

Caleb kneeled down in front of it. He closed his eyes, not reciting a prayer like he was supposed to do but taking a minute of silence, before lighting the candle with a cantrip. “For Yasha,” he said quietly. “And for Molly. For- my family.”

He stared into the flame for a few more moments, and then settled back down in the chair. It felt better now, just sitting there in silence, and he was finally able to calm down. Frumpkin seemed satisfied as well and jumped back onto his lap, curling up into a tight ball before going back to sleep.

It didn't take long for Caleb to start humming to himself, a tune he remembered from the service that night. It was slow, but full of warmth and a weird sense of nostalgia. And unlike many of the classical Barren Eve ballads he knew, it focused more on the hope the next morning would bring instead of all the things that had already been lost to the night. In den Herzen wirds warm Still schweigt Kummer und Harm Sorge des Lebens verhallt Freue dich, Morgen kommt bald

He sat by himself for a while, until he could eventually hear footsteps coming down from Beau's room. For a moment he considered extinguishing the flame and pretending that he had been down in the living room for no other reason than his headache. But he didn't want to disturb his cat again, and also... Beau was from the empire as well. She probably wasn't very big on holidays, but he hoped that she would at least understand.

“Hey, Caleb, have you-” she stopped, just reaching the bottom of the stairs now. And there must have been something in his face, because he could see her mentally piecing everything together in a few seconds. “You, uh, want some time by yourself?”

“No, some company would be nice,” he admitted, freely for once. “You don't have to, of course, I just-”

“No no, it's fine,” she assured him quickly, though she took a step back. “Let me just get something.”

He watched her leave, curious to see what she was talking about. And really, he shouldn't be surprised, he thought, as she came back shortly later with a candle of her own. Considering the colour and the way it was made, Caleb was sure she had nicked it from one of the Cobalt Soul locations.

Similar to what he had done, Beau knelt down in front of the table to place the candle down, lighting it on the little stump that had already been burning for a while now. But she didn't stay down, instead getting up again immediately, crossing her arms over her chest.

“For Yasha. And for Molly,” she said, as if she was announcing it to the room. Then, much quieter, she added: “And for Dairon.”

She sat down on the sofa after that, and they settled into a comfortable silence. But again, it didn't hold for long. Nott was the next to come upstairs, and, being from the Empire as well, grasped what was going on fairly quickly as well.

The candle she lit on Caleb's looked like she had taken it from her workspace, still grimy with soot and whatever else she'd been handling, but burning just fine.

“For Yasha, and Molly. And for Yeza and Luc,” she said, staying on her knees a bit longer before scooting back and leaning against Caleb's legs, apparently more comfortable on the floor. None of them had noticed Caduceus watching until then, but Caleb spotted their friend at the top of the stairs just as Nott was finishing. The firbolg disappeared again, and at first Caleb thought he was just giving them space. After all, he was sure that Caduceus had never heard of Barren Eve.

But their friend surprised them all when he joined again a moment later, a candle of pure bee's wax in his hand. He didn't kneel down, not familiar with the tradition, just bend over to light it on Caleb's stump and straightened up again after making sure it stood securely.

“For Yasha. For Molly. For my family and all those we have buried,” he said, his soothing baritone ringing through the room. They all nodded, and he sat down next to Beau to join them in their silence.

Another twenty minutes later Caleb was close to falling asleep, just as he heard the front door opening and the tell-tale sound of Caduceus' wind chimes that always followed. Probably aware that it was late, Fjord and Jester tried to stay quiet on their way inside, frequently hushing each other.

Caleb smiled to himself, and had to stifle a laugh as he heard one of them push something over in the hallway, sending whatever it was clattering to the ground. He heard Fjord curse, and a moment later the half orc and the tiefling finally stepped into the living room.

“Oh, hey... you guys are still awake,” Fjord greeted them, obviously confused as he saw the four of them sitting around their little candle collection.

Caleb just gave a nod, but caduceus quickly waved them over to himself. After a few shared whispered words, Caleb could see understanding dawn on both of their faces. More cautious on Fjord's part, but Jester seemed immediately excited. “Oooh, that sounds great!” she whispered, though it came out more like a stage whisper. “Can we join?!”

Caduceus answered, quiet enough so Caleb couldn't actually hear him, and they both nodded and walked off. Just like everyone else, they came back with a candle each. “I wanna go first!” Jester insisted, more or less quietly, as she sat down cross-legged in front of the table and lit her candle on Caleb's. “So this is for Yasha,” she started. “And for Molly. And for my Mama, and Bluud, and for Nugget and Sprinkles, and for Essek, and-” Fjord stopped her with a gentle hand on her shoulder, prompting her to look up at him. “That's- I think that's enough people, Jester,” he said gently. “Let me?” “Oh, sure!” She stood up again, letting Fjord take her place. He knelt down properly, cleared his throat, and lit his candle on Caleb's before placing it besides Jester's. His was plain and white, while hers was a long, red, elegant looking one. Caleb was sure he'd seen them at the Lavish Chateau the last time they'd been there.

“For Yasha,” Fjord started, and Caleb recognized the tone he used. He had heard it before when Fjord was speaking to the Wildmother, or simply looking for guidance. “For Molly. And for every single person in this room.”

Heut' ist heilig die Nacht Chor der Engel erwacht Hört nur wie lieblich es schallt: Freue dich, Morgen kommt bald

Caleb's candle started to flicker, almost burned down completely by now. But despite the never-ending night in Xhorhas, he took comfort in knowing that the morning would come soon, and with it... there would always be hope.

Here's a translation of the song (the original is more directly geared towards christmas, I changed the text a bit):

Softly falls the snow, Quiet and frozen rests the lake. Grazeful sparkles the forest: Rejoice! Morning will soon be here.

In our hearts it’s warm, Silent are sorrow and grief, Life’s worries fade away: Rejoice! Morning will soon be here.

Today the night is holy, Choir of angels awakes, Just hear how lovely it sounds: Rejoice! Morning will soon be here.

And a youtube link in case you don't know it and would like to give it a listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HY28Acy1N8

#critical role #cr2 #caleb widogast #mighty nein #beauregard #nott the brave #caduceus clay #jester lavorre #fjord #yasha #mollymauk #writing #fic #fanfiction #mine #barren eve #long post

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pinkevilbobdoesthings · 5 years

Text

IT HALLOWEEN MONTH!!! Have monster!! Here’s “Hard Work and Science”.

Jester woke up with a groan. Her everything hurt. Every muscle, every joint, every nerve, and every inch of skin was sore. Not in a “oh please let the sweet kiss of death release me from this agony” way, but more in an “all I want in life is a hot bath” way. She tried to open her eyes, but the room was too bright. “Nnngh,” she moaned. Trying to get up, she found that her arms were strapped down to her bed. No, it was too firm to be her bed.

“Oh,” someone said. It was more of a sudden intake of breath than a word. Whoever it was mumbled something to themself.

“Mmmnngh, what’s going on?” Jester asked squinting to try to see where she was, but it was still too bright.

“You’re sentient,” the voice said like he could scarcely believe it.

Jester tugged at the straps again. “I’m what?”

“You’re sentient. You’re an intelligent being capable of independent thought.”

“Well, yeah, why wouldn’t I be? Um, can you do something about the lights?” Jester asked.

“Oh, ja, here. I shouldn’t be surprised that you have some light sensitivity.”

Cracking an eye open, Jester found that the room was a lot more bearable. She looked around to see a sterile room. It looked almost looked like a hospital room, but there were all sorts of cages along the wall. “Where are we? Why am I strapped down?”

“Oh, this is my, well, I guess you’d call it my operating room.” The owner of the voice stepped closer. He looked like he was in his mid thirties and had long messy ginger hair. Dark circles hung under his blue eyes and almost looked like bruises against his pale skin. He wore a ratty old lab coat and a blue scarf that had seen much better days. With more sleep and a better coat, he could be handsome though. “As for the straps, they’re to keep you from accidentally pulling out your IV.”

“Oh, that makes sense, I guess. Wait, IV? What happened?” Jester asked. She tried to remember the day before, but it was a blur. The last thing she could remember was that she was spending the day with her mom.

The man turned away and rubbed his arm. His fingers and part of his right hand were all tinged black like a piece of wood that was partially burnt, and his arms were pocked with old puncture marks. “There was a car accident, Miss Lavorre. You were thrown from 50 feet out the window. They nearly didn’t find you.”

Jester leaned forward straining at the straps. “My mom! What happened to my mom?!”

“Marion Lavorre is alive and well. She sustained some bruising and lacerations, but they’ve already healed,” he said.

“Where is she? Can I go see her?” Jester asked.

The man shook his head. “She’s at home most likely, and unfortunately, you can’t see her.”

“Why not?” Jester demanded. “She must be worried sick. My mom needs me.”

“Miss Lavorre, you must believe me when I tell you that that’s an impossible request,” he said.

Tears began to well up in Jester’s eyes. She pulled at the straps holding her wrists down. “You don’t get it! She needs me!”

He let out a sigh and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Miss Lavorre, your mother has known about your death for the last three months. I don’t think showing up at her door would do either of you any good.”

Jester froze. “Death?” That made no sense. She was alive. She was breathing. There was no way she was dead.

“Yes, death. You died in the car crash. The reanimation of dead tissue is a complicated process, but one that I’ve managed to accomplish,” the man said. He said it blandly like it wasn’t a big deal.

It made no sense. There was no way he was telling the truth. Jester yanked at the strap on her right arm one more time and tore it off the bed along with a chunk of the bed. She stared at it.

“Could you do that before?”

Jester shook her head.

“A marked increase of strength of then. I didn’t even consider the possibility.” The man rubbed his stubbly chin. “How do you feel?”

Jester stared at him for a long moment and then began to cry. It was all too much and none of it made any sense. Sloppy tears poured down her cheeks.

Gentle hands removed the strap from her left hand. “Ah, I see your eyes are still capable of lubricat-” He stopped. “I’m sorry, I should start over. My name’s Caleb Widogast.”

“I’m Jester,” she said rubbing her eyes. She stopped and stared at her hands. They were completely blue. Jester looked at Caleb hoping for an explanation.

“I see you noticed.” Caleb looked away. “It was an unforeseen side effect. I was hoping to bring you back without any noticeable changes.”

Jester gripped the thin blanket that covered her. “Why did you do this to me?”

“Why? Because -” Caleb paused and looked down at his strangely tinted hands. “Because you were what I needed to prove my hypothesis. I’m sorry, but I had no noble reason in bringing you back.”

“What’s going to happen to me now?”

Caleb sat down at the edge of the bed. “I’m not cruel. You can stay here. I need to keep track of your vitals anyways.”

Jester looked around the stark and clinical room. It was enough to make her cry again.

“Or you could have my room. It’s not like I sleep much anyways. Though, I don’t know how much you’ll need to sleep now. Frumpkins 1, 3, 4, and 7 sleep much less than they did when they were alive, but Frumpkins 2, 5, and 8 sleep the same amount and Frumpkin 6 sleeps much more.” Caleb rambled talking with his hands animatedly. If Jester met him in a different situation, she would’ve been more curious about him, but all she wanted was to go home. He seemed to notice her and stopped. “Wait, here.” Going over to the cages, Caleb opened one and pulled out a small bengal cat. “This is the first Frumpkin. He died two years ago, came back a year and a half ago, and is my best boy.” Gently, he put Frumpkin onto Jester’s lap.

The cat purred loudly and kneaded Jester’s lap. She stroked the cat’s fur. “Is this a test or something? Do I still like animals?”

“I don’t know if you like cats in the first place, Miss Lavorre. I’m just not very good at people. Frumpkin’s better at helping them than I am,” Caleb said staring down at the foot at the bed. “I was hoping that he could help you.” And all at once he wasn’t a strange, distant mad scientist, but someone small and lost.

“He’s a very good boy,” Jester said.

Caleb nodded. “Ja, and he prefers having his chin scritched to his ears.”

Jester scratched under Frumpkin’s chin earning an even louder purr. “You didn’t think through this whole bringing me back to life thing did you?”

“Nein, I’m starting to notice that I haven’t. Are you going to be okay?” he asked.

Jester gave him her best smile under the circumstances. “I’ll have to be.”

Caleb frowned looking at her. “I won’t be upset if you’re mad at me.”

“I don’t like being mad at people.” Jester continued to scratch Frumpkin. “Besides, being mad at you doesn’t change anything.”

“Still, if there’s I can do for you,” Caleb said.

Jester looked up from Frumpkin. “I am kind of hungry.”

“Oh, ja. I’ve got something for that. Just wait a moment,” Caleb said over his shoulder as he left the room.

Jester watched as he left and then lifted Frumpkin off of her lap. “I’m sorry, but I have to check something.” With a deep breath steeling her nerves, Jester lifted the blanket off to look at the rest of her. A plain cotton hospital gown covered her. Caleb probably put it on her and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Her legs were the same blue as her arms. More concerning the large cuts held together by stitches. There were two on her left leg and one on her right. She checked her arms and found more stitches right below her left shoulder. “I guess I’m like Frankenstien now, right Frumpkin?”

“Actually, Frankenstein’s monster was made up of parts from multiple sources. All of you is Miss Jester Lavorre,” Caleb said as he came back in. “If we were to compare you to a work of fiction, the test subjects from Re-Animator would be more accurate.”

“Oh,” Jester said softly. “How long will these take to heal?”

Caleb set down two plates on the little rolling table next to Jester’s bed. “I don’t know if they will heal. Some of the Frumpkins have maintained their ability to heal, but not all of them.” Jester stared at him in horror, but he didn’t seem to notice it. “Now, I don’t know what your stomach can handle yet and I don’t expect you to eat all of this, but it’s all easy to digest.”

On the larger plate was a clumpy pile of rice, some partially squished pieces of banana, and a baggy of apple slices. The other plate just had two pieces of dry toast. It wasn’t the most appetizing looking meal, but Jester wasn’t going to complain. She took a bite of apple and grimaced. It tasted waxy and flavorless, but she put on a smile anyways. “Thank you, but um dry toast?”

“It’s easy on the stomach, but I guess you’re right about it not being the most appealing. Here.” He ducked behind a counter and came back up with a jar of peanut butter and a water bottle. “We’ll just add enough to make it easier to eat.” Caleb then added what must’ve been the thinnest layer of peanut butter known to mankind.

“Thanks.” Jester added two bits of banana and an apple slice to make a smiley face. It was happier than she felt and failed to improve her mood. She took a bite trying not to cry. Instead she changed the subject. “Why do your hands look like that?”

Caleb’s face turned red and he shoved his hands deep into his coat pockets. “Just an experiment that went poorly.”

“Sorry,” Jester said picking at her rice.

“It’s nothing to apologize for. Curiosity is important.” He put on a pair of gloves and pulled out a notebook. “How is it? Does it taste like what it did when you were alive?”

“I don’t know,” Jester said shrugging. She didn’t want to think about the possibility of the problem being in her tongue and not the bland food Caleb gave her. “I mean I guess it’s rice and toast.”

“Hmmm,” Caleb said jotting something down.

Jester tried to eat a few more bites, but her heart just wasn’t in it. Pushing the table aside, she looked over at Caleb. “Can I ask for something?”

“Ja, of course.”

“Can I have a mirror? To see what I look like?” Part of her was scared to see, but she had to know.

Caleb paled but nodded. He must’ve realized that she was going to want one as he grabbed a mirror off the counter. “You sustained some lacerations on your face, but they’re not as severe as the ones on your body and I was able to close them with surgical glue.“ Not looking at her, he handed her the mirror.

Jester held mirror for a long minute before raising it up to look in it. Looking would just make this nightmare all the more real, but she couldn’t avoid it forever. With a count to three, she brought up the mirror and gasped. “My freckles are blue!”

“Ja, they are,” Caleb agreed.

“That’s actually really cute.” Her hair was also blue too. Jester had always wanted to dye her hair that color.

Caleb nodded with a slight blush. “Ja.”

On further inspection, Jester still looked like her. The dimples on her cheeks still crinkled when she smiled and her eyes were still violet. Little bandages now graced her face though and must’ve covered the cuts Caleb mentioned. “Are these Captain Tusktooth bandages?”

“Ja, they were what I could find,” Caleb said looking away. “I wanted to make sure your facial lacerations were protected.” It was actually kinda sweet in a weird awkward way.

“Thanks. And I like the bandages. Captain Tusktooth is a lot better than a lot of people give it credit for.”

Caleb nodded. “Ja, it’s a great story and the animation is amazing.” His flat voice lost some of its monotone.

Jester grinned and leaned forward. “I know! Like that fight between Captain Tusktooth and Avantika was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“The new season’s going to start soon,” Caleb said. “I can’t wait for new episodes. I had the first three seasons on repeat while working on you.” He frowned. “I probably shouldn’t phrase it like that.”

Jester sat back. “Yeah. But, um, could we watch the new episodes together?”

“You’d want to?” Caleb asked. “With me?”

“I mean sure. It’s more fun to watch with somebody and it’s not like I have anywhere else to watch it,” Jester said.

“Oh right.” He looked almost disappointed. “If you don’t want to stay here, I’d understand.”

Jester bit her lip. “Do I have anywhere else to go?”

“You have a point there, but I’d help you find one. After I confirm that you are stable, of course.”

Jester gave it some thought. “I might take you up on that offer.”

Caleb looked almost disappointed but nodded. “Ja. Please understand that I don’t want you to feel trapped here.”

She already felt trapped in her own skin, but she didn’t say anything. Instead she just smiled at Caleb. If the gloves meant anything, maybe Caleb felt trapped too. Jester knew that she shouldn’t but she liked the idea of not being the only one who felt that way.

“If you need anything or have any questions, you can ask me,” Caleb said.

Jester gave it some thought. “Caleb, you said that you brought me back to prove a hypothesis. What was that hypothesis?”

He gave her the saddest smile in the world rubbing his arms. “Just that nothing can truly be lost forever. There’s something I need to take care of, but Frumpkin can keep you company.” Caleb gave her one last glance and left.

Frumpkin jumped up on Jester’s lap. She scratched his head. “Your owner is very strange.” And kind in his odd way. Jester wasn’t sure what to make of him yet, but she knew that she’d have all the time she needed to. “And who knows, Frumpkin? Maybe this will be fun.”

__________________________

Notes:

So yeah, I tried to make this a multi-chapter fic, but it just wasn't working. So one shot.

The title comes from "Live"by Paul and Storm.

#widojest #critical role fan fiction #pinkevilbob writes

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landofwordsandnonsense · 5 years

Text

And Love Said No

Fandom: Critical Role Rating: Teen and Up Category: Gen Characters: Caleb Widogast, Trent Ikithon, Nott the Brave, Fjord, Caduceus Clay, Beau, Jester Additional Tags: Team as Family, Fuck Trent Ikithon, Temporary Character Death, Canon Typical Violence, everyone loves Caleb and they’re going to make him realize it, this confrontation is inevitable and I have Strong Feelings on how I want it to go, Counterspell is sexy, playing fast and loose with D&D mechanics

Fanfic Masterpost

It couldn't have been avoided forever, even he had to admit that, and it was, perhaps, no more than he deserved. And he was stronger than he'd ever been.

He needed to be, because now he was alone and face to face with the worst person in the world.

In retrospect, they probably should have known better than to plan.

It had been meant to be a quick in-and-out smash and grab at an isolated Cerberus Assembly tower not far from the Xhorhassian border. Mostly for anything Beau could send back to the Cobalt Reserve plus enough of whatever else they could carry to disguise what they’d been after. They'd planned to get in, avoid as many people as they could and incapacitate any they couldn't, then get out before anyone could do anything about it. They were stronger now, but the idea of fighting an entire tower full of Cerberus researchers and warmages wasn't an appealing one.

But of course, their plans had a history of going... awry. Occasionally, something would go approximately the way they wanted it to, but usually, that was absolutely not the case.

This plan had been irrevocably fucked since its inception because they hadn't known who was in residence. Caleb wasn't sure if they would have aborted the plan entirely and stayed away if they'd known, or if they'd have gone in intending to murder everything between them and-

They'd gotten separated, splitting off to cover as much ground as they could as quickly as possible. Nott had been with him, naturally, but while she worked on a stubborn lock he'd felt a familiar thread of magic. He hadn't entirely meant to, but he'd followed it.

It couldn't have been avoided forever, even he had to admit that, and it was, perhaps, no more than he deserved. And he was stronger than he'd ever been.

He needed to be, because now he was alone and face to face with the worst person in the world.

He was trembling from a tangle of emotions too complicated to put a name to, but certainly fear and anger made up the larger portion of it. Caleb wanted to run, but it would have done him little good. So he held his ground, not trusting himself to speak, and glared across the chamber at Trent Ikithon.

"Bren, my boy," Ikithon said in that commanding voice that had once seemed so enticing, a beacon of truth and trust, that promised power if only he'd do as he was told without question. It made Caleb's skin crawl. "I'm so pleased to see you've returned to us, healthy and whole of mind again." He'd always been good at saying the right thing, but now Caleb could hear the poison under it, the deep, sardonic evil in every word.

"That is, that is not my name anymore," Caleb snarled. His hands were clenched tight in an unsuccessful attempt to minimize the shaking. "And I, I did not... I did not return to you." It was a statement he never could have imagined uttering, not to Trent Ikithon, and if he'd had time to think about it the words would have caught in his throat. But he'd spoken without thought, and now that he'd said it he wouldn't take it back. Even if having said that to the man who had once been the center of his universe made his heart try to beat out of his chest.

Ikithon's pleasant smile vanished. "You always were too stubborn for your own good. I see I shall have to re-educate you." His hands started moving in arcane gestures. "You belong to me, Bren. I made you. I own you."

Once, that had been true. There was no denying that Bren had belonged to Trent Ikithon, mind, body and soul. But- and Caleb hadn't realized it until just now- Bren was dead. Bren had been dead for a long time. "No," he said, surprising even himself as he held up his own hands and his Counterspell unravelled the enchantment the archmage was weaving. "My name. Is Caleb. Widogast." And Caleb belonged only to the Mighty Nein. His hand started to crackle and blacken, bursting into flames.

Ikithon sneered. "You wouldn't dare attack me. I, who taught you so much, who did my best to make a weak boy strong. I, who was like a father to you. Stop making a fool of yourself and cease this meaningless posturing this instant."

For a moment, Caleb thought he was right. Even now, even after everything, there was a part of him that doubted. A part of him that thought Trent had always been right and he was simply too weak to bear it. But the fire in his hand didn't go out, and he took a step forward. "No. You will, you will never, you will never use me again. Or anyone else."

And Trent Ikithon, the man who had haunted Caleb's waking nightmare for years, the person Caleb feared most in the world, took a step back. Caleb lifted his hand, and for a timeless moment, Caleb had the unthinkable privilege of seeing something in Ikithon's eyes he'd never thought to see.

Fear.

Then the moment shattered as the pain hit. It wasn't a spell, not really, at least, it was nothing that could be counterspelled. Caleb inhaled sharply, fighting the urge to double over in agony. A countermeasure, he realized dimly. Or a contingency. He'd been unaware of it until just now. But he'd been trained to fight through the pain, to ignore mere physical discomfort if it meant accomplishing his mission. He kept his hand up, despite the way he was shaking, and reached for the fire.

Another spasm wracked him and he couldn't help dropping to one knee. His breathing was harsh and he couldn't get enough air in, and the world kept swimming in and out of focus. But even now he wouldn't back down. He tried again. The third spasm was worse than ever, and he could taste blood bubbling up in his mouth.

"You stupid boy," Ikithon hissed. "What good is a weapon that can be turned against the man who made it?" He'd recovered his self-possession once it was clear that Caleb couldn't attack him. "Did you really think I'd ever give you the capability of harming me? All you are is a defective tool that needs must be destroyed. What a waste."

Caleb fell to his knees, oddly serene through the haze of pain. He was going to die here, but he had one comfort. He wasn't Trent's, and he never would be again. Here in this moment, he wanted nothing more than to kill Trent. He wanted it more than he'd ever wanted anything in his life, up to and including a way to turn back the time. The will was there, and the fire in his hand flared brighter as he tried one last time. He wanted to do it. He genuinely wanted to kill this man.

He just.

Couldn't.

Physically.

Do it.

He choked on blood and slumped over backwards. In the end, he thought muzzily, he was his own. He had no idea what was waiting for him in the Raven Queen’s realm, doubtless nothing pleasant. But he was his own, he didn’t belong to Trent Ikithon and he couldn’t take him back.

Then Nott’s voice shrieked “NO!” Two bolts flew out of the darkness and hit Ikithon in the torso, making him stagger back.

Before he could regain his balance, three streaks of light sizzled through the air over Caleb's head. Ikithon was able to bring up a shield that caught two of them, but the third went through and Caleb could hear the strangled curse as the old man spent a few precious moments patting the flames out of his ornate robes. Fjord strode past Caleb and halted two steps in front of him, glove still smoking.

Caleb was so startled by the half-orc's sudden appearance that he was slow in noticing he hadn't fallen against the stone tiles of the floor, but was propped up against someone's chest, with an arm around him. "I've got you, Mister Caleb," Caduceus rumbled, and there was a warm surge of magic that smelled like leaf mould and tea. His vision cleared a bit and it was easier to breathe, but there was no hope of him getting to his feet just yet. Behind him, he could hear movement, but there was too much Caduceus in the way to see.

"Fjord?" Beau's voice was rough and there was a restrained fury in it that Caleb was astonished by.

"I've got them," he said quietly, never taking his eyes off of Ikithon. "Fuck him up."

With no more warning than that, there was a blur of blue off to one side, followed almost immediately by a second, and the bright pink of Jester's floating lollipop. And maybe once he'd have tried to convince the rest of them to stay out of harm's way and let him deal with Ikithon. It was his problem, after all, and if it was a fight he couldn't win, well, he had it coming.

But he knew better now. Easier to convince the sun to rise in the west than to keep the Mighty Nein from protecting one of their own, and he was, for better or for worse, one of the Mighty Nein.

Everything became a little frenetic at that point, and Caleb could barely keep track of what was going on. Caduceus wouldn't let him up, worried that the wizard would aggravate the internal injuries he'd managed to give himself... and it wouldn't have made much difference anyway. Caleb couldn't attack Ikithon, that had been made abundantly clear... but he'd been watching Ikithon's hands, which started to twist together in arcane gestures as the girls bolted towards him. "Nein," Caleb whispered, and the Counterspell dissipated the magic before it had a chance to be anything. Beau and Jester were laying into the archmage, Beau's hands glowing with the Wildmother's light as he jerked out of the way just in time to narrowly avoid a shattered jaw. Periodically, crossbow bolts would rain down as well, but between Nott's natural stealthy nature and what was almost certainly the Traveller's blessing, even Caleb couldn't spot her.

They had, Caleb realized with dull wonder, managed to force Ikithon to go on the defensive. Between the unpredictable crossbow bolts, Beau's relentless attacks, and Jester's floating lollipop and the dull bong of Toll the Dead, he could barely get the time to cast. And when he did, Caleb was waiting.

His head was enough in the game that he recognized the somatic components of the spells as Ikithon started to cast.

Charm Person. "Nein..." Counterspell.

Sleep. "Nein." Counterspell.

Feeblemind. "Nein."

He didn't recognize that one, it was one he hadn't learned but it looked indescribably nasty. "NEIN."

Ikithon whirled, throwing up a Shield at the last moment to block a devastating blow from Jester's spiritual weapon. His urbane, controlled mask had fallen, and he was nearly unrecognizable with his face twisted in rage and fury. "You dare!" he screamed. "You who were born nothing and will die nothing! I made you, and you are mine to destroy!" He pulled his hand back, and flung a fistful of crackling death directly at Caleb.

Fjord had been keeping out of the fight, standing protectively in front of Caleb and Caduceus, but he moved then. He threw his arm out, and his shield glinted with an otherworldly light as it caught the spell and sent it careening away to impact harmlessly on the wall. Then he grabbed the spiral-carved seashell hanging innocently from a cord around his neck. "Stop," he said in a quiet, commanding tone that could not be argued with.

And Trent Ikithon's body locked up.

Jester darted forward with her hands filled with necrotic energy laced with green. She grabbed Ikithon and he bellowed in rage and pain. Then the Hold Person failed, and he jerked in her hands. Lightning crackled against her before Caleb could do anything about it. He made an incoherent sound of rage, and the only reason he didn't forget himself and try to set Ikithon alight then and there was Caduceus's gently restraining grip. By some miracle neither Jester nor Beau had taken a hit yet but that couldn't last and he knew that but like hell was Caleb going to let this monster ruin his family the way he ruined him...

"Just trust us, Mister Caleb," Caduceus said softly. "We've faced worse." Caleb made a breathless, hysterical noise at that. Hard to imagine anything worse-

There was a startled squeak as the lightning discharged, then Duplicity vanished with a soft pop.

If Beau had been furious before, she was enraged now, in a way that rivaled Yasha in the heat of battle. "Fuck you," she snarled. Of course, they all tended to get offended when anyone targeted Jester, so that wasn't surprising. What was surprising was what she said next. "You don't get to talk about my brother like that, you son of a fuck." Before he could sneer a response, her fist slammed into his spine hard enough he went down to one knee, and whatever spell he'd been trying to cast fizzled as his arms went limp.

"Do you- do you even know what you are protecting?" Ikithon snapped. "Do you know what he's done? Who he's ki-"

"Yeah. I do." Beau crossed her arms as two more crossbow bolts found their mark and Ikithon cried out. "I know exactly what you made him into and what you convinced him was the right thing to do about it. And it doesn't fucking matter."

"We've all done super shitty things," Jester said as she appeared out of the darkness. "And we've killed a lot of people. We love him and we don't care! You don't even care, you're just trying to make us hate him!" Green light flared in her hands and he fell to his other knee when it hit him and he screamed.

"You've lost," Beau said in a dangerously soft voice. "There's hell to pay and we've come to collect. We didn't know you'd be here today, but we were always going to come for your ass. And I really hope there's a special place in the Nine Hells all set up just for you."

The reality of the situation seemed to hit Ikithon all at once. He couldn't teleport away or even run; he'd used a lot of magic already and Caleb was waiting with at least three more Counterspells. He was barely alive at this stage, after the damage the girls had done. And it was plain to anyone with eyes or ears that they weren't going to let him walk away. For the first time, he was faced with his own mortality and realized that for all of his cunning and all of his planning, this ragtag bunch of barely functional assholes had beaten him. "There may be a place in the Nine Hells marked for me," he growled. "But I won't be going there alone." Then a Word rumbled through the air. It didn't matter that a crossbow bolt immediately sank into his eye or that Beau almost instantly snapped his neck, because the Word had already been spoken.

And Caleb choked before slumping lifelessly in Caduceus's arms.

----------------------------------------

Wind whipped around him, and nothing seemed to stabilize long enough for him to make out any details. Pink and blue and green flared, and he didn't know if he should be comforted or afraid. Then purple added to the mix and even though his surroundings were still a chaotic mess, the sound of the wind died away and gave him space to think.

'I like this person, right now, is a good person, a fine person.... That person is dead, and not- It's just a person who had this body. They abandoned it...'

A sensation he couldn't identify ghosted across his forehead. 'Time for that later.'

----------------------------------------

"-leb! Caleb!"

There was a small weight in his lap, and he blinked dazedly at the blurs of green and blue and pink that surrounded him before they resolved into the rest of the Nein clustered around him. He was still half in Caduceus's lap, with Jester kneeling on the other side and Fjord looking at him upside down from somewhere above his head. Nott was crouched on top of him, her claws caught in his coat and tears running down her face. Beau was a little distance away, taut as a wire and worrying at her thumbnail.

Caleb took a rattling breath and coughed. Then he shifted a little, and became aware of the dull shards of useless stone scattered across his chest and the floor around him. Nott's reaction was immediate. "Caleb!" She threw her arms around his neck and clung to him like she'd never let go again. It practically knocked what little air he had out of him, but that didn't stop him from slowly putting his own arms around her in a shaky hug.

Over her shoulder, Caduceus gave him a surprisingly relieved smile. "Welcome back, Mister Caleb."

Jester clutched at one of his hands tightly. Her eyes were red, and there were still tear tracks down her face. "Caleb! I'm so so sorry we didn't kill that dickhead sooner! We should have- we let him-"

He managed to squeeze her fingers slightly. "It is, it is all right, blueberry. I was..." He trailed off, then offered her a brittle half-smile. "I had long... come to terms with... the idea that... I would.... I would have to die... to... to be free of him."

Fjord's hand came down on his shoulder and squeezed comfortingly. "He can't hurt you again. We made sure of that. You or anyone else."

"...Ja. Ja. That is... that is gut. Th.... thank you..." He wouldn't ask. They'd done so much for him, more than he'd ever dreamed, it would be churlish to ask. He trusted them, after all, and if they said it was so, then-

Beau understood him better than most, though, and she saw something in his shadowed eyes that even Nott didn't. So after a few minutes, while everyone clung to him and reassured themselves he was alive, she stepped forward. "C'mere." She reached down to give him a hand up, gently shooing Nott off of him and taking his hand from Jester. They obligingly moved, and she hauled Caleb up like he weighed nothing at all. She pulled one arm around her neck and held onto it, and put her other arm around his waist. He probably could have kept his feet without the support, but for once in his life he wasn't going to protest the contact.

No one said anything as she kept hold of him, walking him over to the center of the room. Trent Ikithon's body was lying in an unceremonious, inert heap. It was impossible to tell what had killed him, the crossbow or Jester's magic, or the extremely comprehensive beating Beau had dished out. Maybe it didn't matter. But seeing it... that made it real. Caleb took a shuddering breath, then closed his eyes for a moment. "You okay, man?" Beau asked quietly.

"...No. But... but perhaps... I will be. In time. With... with help." He didn't look at her as he said it, but he didn't have to.

She squeezed the hand she'd pulled over her shoulder. "You've got it," she said. "We're here to catch you."

"I know." And funnily enough, he did. He was surprised to realize he actually believed her. "Beauregard?"

"Yeah?"

"...I would, I would be honored. To call you my sister."

Her dark skin flushed a little and she looked away. But he could tell she was pleased. "You ready to get out of here?"

Caleb looked down at his free hand for a moment. Beau didn't jump when the flames licked out of his palm to cover it, but she did raise an eyebrow. He stared at his hand for a heartbeat longer, then looked at the body on the floor. This time, there was no pain, nothing prevented him from casting Fire Bolt. And when the body burst into flames there was no reaction after all. Caleb sagged against Beau. A weight had lifted off of him, so heavy that its absence was a physical thing that left him disoriented. "It's over," he murmured. "It's finally over."

"Yeah. Come on, we stole a bunch of shit you should look at."

He gave her a breathless little laugh, and let her help him out of the room, with the others trailing behind. It was, he thought, a good way to start the rest of his life.

#fanfic #critical role #mighty nein #one shot

27 notes · View notes

doomlover21 · 5 years

Text

Widojest Week Day 3

Well originally I had no ideas for this until a certain Full Metal Alchemist episode popped into my head. The rest of the story kinda wrote itself. Enjoy Kissing the Shots Away!

Caleb Widogast had always hated needles at the best of times, and having one of those needles inside his own body was certainly one of those times. Beauregard knew first hand what it had been like when he had to go and get his most recent flu shot for his new job, and she would often regale their mutual friends of the tale at every opportunity. And Caleb would always sit there, face flushed in embarrassment, as she would tell of how she had had to wrestle him and hold him down. She would oftentimes embellish the story to make him seem more squeamish than he really was, but Nott and him would always be there to correct him. It was thereafter decided that any time he had to have a shot or a needle poking him, that Beau or her new girlfriend, Yasha, would be there to hold him in place.

While working his new job in the antique shop, a particularly old table had caught the tail end of his long coat and tripped him up. In the effort of freeing himself, he had scrapped his leg against the side where an old rusty nail was sticking out. The nail tore into his flesh leaving a nasty gash that left his already filthy and hole-ridden pants covered in blood.

Caduceus, the kindly old shopkeeper, had heard him cry out and immediately rushed over to help. He was gentle as he poked and prodded at the wound.

“Let’s get you all cleaned up. That could get nasty if we don’t,” he told his employee. Caleb simply nodded. The gash wasn’t that deep, but the pain from it still left him speechless. Caduceus led him to the small bathroom in the back and fished in the cupboard for the first aid kit.

“Ah…here it is,” he announced when he finally found it. He laid it out on the sink and gestured for his charge to sit on the toilet lid. He looked at the wound just above his left knee.

“Hmm…you’re gonna have to remove these,” he said as he poked at his pants. A deep red graced the red-headed man’s face.

“Is zat really necessary, Mr. Clay?” he asked.

“I’m afraid so, Mr. Caleb. I can’t properly treat this without getting a better angle at it,” he said softly. Caleb nodded and reluctantly removed his pants. It didn’t take very long for the much taller man to clean and bandage his cut, and Caleb is relieved when Caduceus finally left him to put his pants back on.

As he left the bathroom, he told him in no uncertain terms that the injured man was to take the rest of the day off to rest his leg. Caleb protested, but the pink haired hippie was very persistent. Finally Caleb relented.

“Okay, but I vill be here tomorrow. I promise you zis.” Caduceus waved him off.

“Just do us both a favor, preferably before you come back to work, make sure you get yourself a tetanus shot.” And with that Caduceus was gone. The man may as well have told Caleb that he had cancer and only had a few days left to live. His normally pale complexion became ghostly, his palms were suddenly fountains of sweat, and his hands were shaking so badly he wasn’t sure if he’d even be able to get himself home. With some extreme mental effort and several minutes of floundering, he finally managed to find and dial Beauregard’s work number from his cell.

“This had better be good, Widogast! I’m not so trusting of our other instructor, Old man river,” she warned. He snickered. Old man river was the name she had adopted for the latest instructor at the dojo/fitness place she worked at. He was apparently very good at what he did, but Beau had never been very good with authority figures or people showing her up. Both of which this man had seemed to do from day one.

“Ja, ja…don’t vorry. It is a good vone,” he assured her. He took a deep breath. He never did like getting on his roommates bad side and this was definitely going to get on her bad side.

“I need a ride home,” he continued. He pulled the phone from his ear just in time to avoid blowing his eardrums out from the sound of her scream.

“WHAT?! THE FUCK’D YA DO?! DON’T TELL ME THAT OLD PIECE OF SHIT YOU DRIVE FINALLY DIED ON YOU? I TOLD YOU TO GET RID OF THAT OLD THING!”

“It is not zat, Beauregard. I am simply…I..uh..don’t know if I vill be capable of drivink myself home,” he said in a low tone. His face became flushed again.

“Huh?” she asked in confusion. It didn’t take her very long to reign in that confusion and just go with it. It never did with her.

“So what gives? Deucy decide to give his resident bookworm a fucking break for once?”

“Ah, nein. I..uh,” he trailed off. Now that he had to tell her why he needed to leave made him feel small and weak again. Not that his friends and roommates didn’t already know that, but he certainly didn’t need anything else for them to tease him about.

“Just promise you won’t..um..it’s kind of embarssink, Beauregard,” he whispered into the phone. He could practically hear her smirk over the phone.

“Oooooo…..embarrassing…huh? What’d ya do? Stub your toe on an old chair? Get dust in your eye from a moth ridden book? Trip over a dirty old rug?” she teased.

“See, zis ist vhy I don’t like tellink you eferysink zat goes on. You alvays turn it into a joke,” he groans.

“Ah, come on, Widogast. I was just teasin’ ya. Relax.” He clears his throat.

“To answer your question, sough, I..um..cut myself on an old table. Caduceus vants me to go home and rest,” he explained. The only reply he got was raucous laugher. He groaned again. Maybe calling her was a bad idea.

“Beau,” he growled. Her laughter slowly died down and he could hear her gasping for breath for a few minutes.

“Okay…okay. So let me get this straight. You cut yourself on a table, which not gonna go into any details sounds deeply fucked up, Caleb.” He rolled his eyes at the phone.

“And then Deucy tells you hey, Mr. Weak Knees, I’m sending you home to rest, and now you’re calling me to come and pick your sorry ass up because you’re afraid to drive?” He nodded.

“Ja. Zat about sums it up,” he confirmed. She sighed.

“Fine. But you owe me for this.”

“Ja, ja. I know.”

“Alright, fine. I’ll be there in ten.”

“Alright. Oh and Beauregard?”

“Yeah?”

“Danke.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll see ya soon, Pansy.” They both hung up then, and Caleb walked out to go and wait. Knowing how his roommate drove it really wouldn’t take ten minutes. It would be closer to five, but he wasn’t about to argue with one of the girls he knew could easily kick his ass.

Sure enough, the deep blue jeep of his roommate arrived five minutes after she said she would and the surly woman stomped into Caddy’s Curiosities. She greeted the pink haired proprietor with a wave and he pointed her towards the Zemnian sitting in a plush armchair.

“What the fuck am I gonna do with you?” she asked. He shrugged.

“So let me see the big bad boo boo,” she teased him. He scowled at her.

“It is a cut, Beauregard and nosink more zan zat,” he insisted.

“Ah…Miss Beau,” Caduceus called out. They both turned to look at him. He was holding a teacup in his hand and smiling warmly like he always did.

“Yeah?”

“You really should take him to get a tetanus shot. That nail was pretty old,” he told her. She nodded and rolled her eyes. A violent sigh erupted from her as she pulled her Zemnian roommate to his feet and out the door. Admittedly she was a bit rougher than she should have been, but right now she didn’t care. She was pissed. She really hated taking the stubborn scaredy-cat for shots, and she especially hated how she always had to hold him down for them.

“Come on, Widogast! You’re more trouble than you’re worth sometimes,” she huffed in exasperation. The pair climbed into her car, her closing the door with far more force than was really necessary, and she drove off.

It didn’t take long for Caleb to realize that they were going the wrong way. It was one of the things that drove her crazy about him. The man was a walking encyclopedia, and he would spout off trivia and various other facts or just go on and on about some new thing he learned for hours. Frantically, he looked around.

“Vhere are you takink me?” he asked in a shaky voice.

“Gods, you are such a pussy, Caleb. And you have the immune system of a fucking twig. There’s no way that I’m about to let you just go home and risk getting a fucking infection or gods know what the fuck else just because you’re a wuss,” she ground out. If he had been frightened before, he was terrified now. So terrified in fact that she was glad that her car’s passenger side door lock was busted. If it hadn’t have been, she doubted that he’d have been in the car for much longer, despite the fact that she was making a new land speed record to the urgent care.

It was certainly a sight to behold watching the pair of them entering the pristine white building. It was more like he was a reluctant pet being dragged to the vet’s rather than a tall skinny man being taken to the doctor’s. The receptionist greets them with a snort and barely contained chuckles as Beau wrestles a flailing Caleb inside. All the while he curses and begs and pleads in several different languages, all but one she was familiar with.

“Will you just sit the fuck down and be quiet, ya big baby?” It wasn’t long before a nurse came bouncing out into the waiting room. She was unlike any other nurse that either of them had ever seen. Her shrubs had all manner of unicorns and sparkles on them. Two bright rainbow lollipop earrings dangled from her ears, and her short chin-length hair was a deep blue color. She didn’t even bother looking at the patient folders before approaching them.

“Hi, I’m Jester,” she introduced.

“And you must be Cayleb,” she said to the still shaking man.

“Come with me, Cayleb. I have something I have to give you.” She didn’t wait for a reply. She just skipped off.

“But wait…hold on..” Beau protested, but the nurse wasn’t listening. She dragged Caleb to his feet and continued dragging him the whole way to the small room Jester led them too, once again cursing and flailing the whole time. Jester smiled at them as they came in and gestured for him to take a seat.

“I’ve just gotta warn ya that he can be a bit of a pain in the fucking ass to give you know what’s to,” Beau whispered conspiratorially.

“Don’t worry. I have a secret weapon against that,” Jester whispered back.

“You know I can still hear you,” Caleb said but neither woman paid him any mind.

“Now you just sit here, Cayleb. I have something very special to give to you,” she told him. He shook his head furiously.

“I know vhy I am here. You can’t fool me like I am some sort of child,” he insisted.

“Oh really?! So you’re like a smart guy, huh?” Jester asked. Neither Caleb nor Beau could tell if she was being serious or not.

“Uh…..” he trailed off. Beau giggled. It wasn’t often that the Zemnian was at a loss for words. Gods was she gonna treasure every moment of this. Jester giggled at him, and it was such a delightful sound to his ears. It sounded like sweet music or even like water flowing down a river. She winked at him, and a deep flush came to his cheeks. It wasn’t often that he found himself this flustered, and especially not by someone he had only just met. But flustered he was.

She approached him slowly and gently placed a well manicured hand on his arm. The nails weren’t very long, he noted, but they were a very pretty pink color that contrasted quite nicely with her blue hair. She ran her fingers up and down his arms, and against his better judgement he actually began relaxing. She leaned in and gently placed a kiss on his lips. It was his first kiss in nearly twenty years.

He had never seen her pull out the needle, nor did he see her put it in his arm, hell he didn’t even feel it when it went in. All he was focused on was this strange nurse in front of him and her lips on his. All too soon she broke away. A bright mischievous smile was on her face.

“All done! Now see that wasn’t so hard was it?” she asked. He looked down then. Down at the arm she had touched with her hand. It now had a bandaid with multi-colored unicorns on it. He was angry and more than a little shocked that this strange woman was not only able to pull one over on him, but that she was also able to put him in such a stupor in the first place.

“Wow! I’ll admit it! You’ve got skill, Girl,” Beau said. Caleb recognized the tone. It was her I’m horny tone. Her I want to bed this woman tone. He rolled his eyes. Jester simply laughed that sweet laugh again, and he nearly swooned. He shook his head to clear the thoughts away. There was no way that he was going to allow himself to fall for another woman. Not after his last relationship had ended so disastrously.

“So can I like call you sometime?” Beau was asking. Caleb didn’t hear Jester’s reply as he was too focused on her placing something in his hand.

“If you ever need me to kiss away your bad shots away again, just give me a call. Or you could just call me, and we could like totally hang out and stuff….Well, I mean we would technically have to hang out when I’m not at work and stuff technically but…” she was ranting but Caleb simply nodded curtly.

“Ja. I…uh..I vould like zat….uh..…Jester,” he stuttered. It was the first actual words he had spoken to her and she shrieked with delight. Her bright and cheery smile shocked a small shy smile out of him. It was his first real smile since….well he didn’t want to think about anything that came before. That was in his past and it was a painful past at that. All he wanted to think about was this moment. Oh and maybe the future, so long as Jester was a part of it.

“Okay so it’s settled….Oh we are gonna be like the best of friends, you guys!” she gushed. She flashed him another smile as she lead them back out to the waiting room. The normally hyperaware Zemnian couldn’t tell you what happen after or when they got home or how long they were there. He was lost in his thoughts. Beau and Nott knew better than to disturb him when he got like this. It often ended badly when you did.

It wasn’t long after that Jester Lavorre became another one of their friends. Her joyful pranks and easy smiles became the delight of all their friends. And it was said that from that fateful day on, Caleb Widogast was no longer afraid to get any shots, at least as long as Jester was around to give them to him.

#widojestweek #widojest #caleb widogast #jester lavorre #critical role #critrole #caduceus clay #beauregard #fanfic

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widobravely · 5 years

Text

"and they all lived happily ever after” “but how?”

i’ve been trying to think of endgame for the mighty nein and can’t really figure out their happily ever afters. i mean, i hope campaign 2 goes on for a long long time because i fucking love them, but like. how will it work, after. on what page do we close the book?

nott/veth can have a happily ever after. it’s all wrapped up in a beautiful ribbon and button flowers: she gets turned back into a halfling, she goes back to felderwin, she and yeza give luke another two or three siblings, as well as a pet or two that she claims to despise but they all adore her anyway. it’s beautiful, it’s perfect, it’s easy--and i’m not sure if, after all that character development, it’s what’s supposed to happen?

nott/veth has discovered that all the things she thought she wasn’t--brave, pretty, capable--she absolutely is. i haven’t caught up yet so i don’t know all the details, but those are just details. i imagine that veth grew up thinking all she was going to be was a housewife, or not being a wife of any sort at all, and then she married yeza and she had a son and she was content. yes she still carried around her crippling insecurities, but she was content. and i imagine if the goblins hadn’t come, she’d remain so--unaware of her magical talent, friendless-except-for-yeza, but a damned good mother and content, content, content.

she’s more than who she thought she could be, now. she’s growing into herself. she’s making decisions. she has a group of friends who would die for her. and somehow the thought of going back to a quiet farming town...doesn’t seem right for her, anymore?

she deserves to be happy. i wonder if her old life can make her so, now?

caleb--oh caleb. we know what his ultimate goal is: to turn back time, to change his past, to save his parents. we are terrified of what will happen if he does. i hope very much his happily ever after is instead him choosing to let the past be in the past, apologize to his parents’ ghosts, and move forward with his found family. where does he end up, after? where does he go?

imagining a caleb slotted into the brenatto family: a beloved brother slash uncle figure to luke, often the center of a kitty cuddlepile, warm and safe and loved. that would be nice, wouldn’t it? and maybe a library. or multiple libraries, where he can just. indulge. in his passion for learning and knowledge. he never has to go into combat again, he can just be. learn for the sake of learning. maybe he’d like to teach? who knows.

but what if he does manage to accomplish his goals. what if he does manage to turn back time. what happens then? bren aldric ermendrud probably never goes to the academy. then what? he’ll never become caleb widogast, either, and he isn’t going to be in a jail cell with a goblin girl and he isn’t going to meet a bunch of lunatics in a bar in trostenwald and--

say for example he intervenes in the raid on felderwin, saving veth. what then? veth doesn’t know him. veth doesn’t need him. caleb and nott: i’m sticking with you ‘cause i’m made out of glue. veth doesn’t have that need because she was never hungry or tired or desperate or a halfling turned goblin. will they still be friends? he saved her and her family’s lives. i don’t know. people smarter than me can meta that. but it will be changed. it will be bren and veth, not caleb and nott.

say he saves veth. what then? is he going to hunt down beau and jester and fjord and molly and yasha and caduceus? is he going to form an adventuring party without veth? why would he? what drives him? after saving his parents, is he just. going to leave them?

i don’t think caleb has thought out his plan completely, or how his life is going to change after he Accomplishes his Goal. you see, the goal isn’t to bring his parents back to life. it’s to erase what he did. he can’t forgive himself for killing his parents, and it’s not enough to make them live again, he can do that with true resurrection. he wants to make sure he’s never done it.

but in unmaking that, he unmakes caleb, and thus the mighty nein.

but enough about a hobo wizard who hasn’t thought about the consequences of his actions.

caduceus. i’ve always thought that After Everything, he goes back to the blooming grove. that’s his goal: save the grove. he’s going to be the one to save the grove. he’s going to read the book caleb gave him and he’s going to find something that heals cursed, blighted lands and the nein are going to go on a quest, a caduceus arc, and they’re going to save the blooming grove.

maybe this: maybe all his family comes back, maybe nila’s firbolg tribe comes to stay, maybe he spends the rest of his long long life making tea and gossiping with nila about how to grow mosses.

but we run into the same problem as we did with veth: is he going to be happy there, in the stillness? in the silence? after his growth, is he going to be able to fit back into the pot?

i don’t know. i guess we’ll see.

beauregard. where does she fit. where does she go? the mighty nein is the only family she’s ever really had. i think if it were up to beau, she’d want to keep going, keep adventuring. but that’s reliant on what the others want, isn’t it? if veth stays with yeza and luke. if caleb unmakes the world. if caduceus, after solving his problem, goes home.

jester i think will want to keep going, too, because she wants to see the whole world, you guys. jester wants to compensate for all those years in a locked room. jester is going to roam and explore and discover and spread the word of the traveler--and it’s the traveler, it isn’t the guy who has a temple in just one place that’s boring. in that case i see beau and jester staying together. they drop by nicodranas every so often to say hey to mama lavorre. yes, of all the nein i can see beau and jester’s happily ever after the clearest: they’re not going to settle down, they have wandering feet, there’s an entire world to see.

it’s not going to be the same, without everyone else. but it could be good, too.

(point for beaujesters, maybe?)

there are undefined things, there are questions. what about the cobalt soul? what about the expositors? can beau ever go back to the empire? what about her family, her brother?

but in the end, well. i don’t think beau will ever want to settle down in kamordah and run a vineyard, so. adventuring with jester and spreading the word of the traveler it is!

i had a wild thought: what if jester takes over the gentleman’s criminal empire? but naaaah, i don’t think jester would like that, so let’s not.

yasha--yasha has no defined goals, no defined end. zuala is dead. zuala could possibly be true-resurrected, but what happens after? do they stay in xhorhas, or go off to explore like beau and jester? actually i can see that happening, too: beau and jester and zuala and yasha, just off to see the world. and what a lovely image: zuala comes back to life, and the first thing she sees is yasha and a book of flowers: i brought you flowers, love. i have so many flowers to show you.

if they true-resurrect zuala. i think a pretty important theme in the nein is moving on, putting the past behind them. nott needs to reconcile with veth’s insecurities and realize she’s more than what she thought she was; caleb needs to forgive himself and let his parents go. i don’t know if zuala’s resurrection would be a good thing or a bad thing. again, smarter people than me can probably meta that.

fjord fjord fjord. what is he going to do, what does he want? he was so happy on the sea. it was like coming home, for him. i don’t think he’ll ever unlock uk’otoa, no--fjord isn’t stupid enough to mess with a scary god-snake i hope, so. what happens to him?

maybe he finds vandren, maybe together they make amends, maybe they go back to the ball-eater and go sailing off with orly and marius and the rest? that would be nice, too. beau and jester hitch a ride every so often. fjord i think has gotten used to a life of adventure, and sailing is probably never boring. and fjord and vandren can always go diving for treasure. they’re chosen by a water deity, after all.

and molly?

there are two courses of action, i think, and here’s the one i like the most:

all is said and done, after the nein kill the bbeg or solve the ancient mysteries or whatever, jester attempts true resurrection on molly.

and fails.

molly’s main thing is that he hates change. he lives wild and free and hedonistic and he wants to stay exactly that way forever. he disdains lucien/nonagon as someone who occupied this body before him. and his friends? will have grown and changed so much. he only knew them for thirty-nine days and now they’re all so different. i think molly was good with the life he lived, all two years of it, and was happy to go out as he did.

i bet he’s hanging out with vax in the afterlife, trashtalking everyone. and when the nein start dying for real, he’ll be in the welcome party.

but he isn’t going to come back.

the other course of action is of course the happy fairytale ending wherein molly comes back and there’s lots of hugging and he slots in perfectly in the nein, which--doesn’t seem possible to me, but why not! it’s great! molly can go adventuring with his best friend yasha and yasha’s wife, and beau, who has developed a worrying attachment to him, and jester who is so happy to have him back. he’ll go back to living wild and free and hedonistic.

that story feels a little empty.

no, i much prefer molly staying dead and hanging out with vax and zuala and maybe bren’s parents? and they all watch the nein live happy lives and trash talk them and. just. be at peace.

to end, let me paint you a pretty picture:

there is a house in nicodranas, not too far away from the lavish chateau. inside of that house are multiple teleportation circles, linking to the blooming grove and zadash and hupperdook and alfield and other places that are important to the nein.

there’s a kettle on the stove and a bunch of teas caduceus left during his last visit. luke is at the table, doing his homework--yeza is in the lab, mashing something, making something, while veth is testing some acids in the other lab.

caleb is curled up in front of the fire, frumpkin purring, reading a book on luke’s current homework so he can answer any questions his nephew(?) might throw at him.

just then the door bursts open and beau, jester and yasha flood in. “heeeeey everyone!” jester calls. “we’re hooooome!”

luke jumps up from the table. “did you bring me presents? did you, did you?”

“so many,” beau says, and mimes staggering under the weight. “little man, you’re getting spoiled.”

jester hugs caleb and says, “you don’t smell stinky!! did you take a bath?” and caleb says dryly, “ja, nicodranas has some very nice bathhouses.”

yasha doesn’t say much, but she smiles at luke, and when veth bustles in and hugs her hello, she drops a crown of exotic, fragrant flowers on her friend’s head.

there’s a knock on the open door, and fjord peeks in. “space for another one?” he asks.

“NO!” veth cries out, and everyone laughs.

just then, the teleportation circle activates, and caduceus steps out, bearing more mosses and tea. “i’m just in time,” he says. “that’s great. that’s really nice.”

and the water is hot, and the tea is made, and everyone’s around the table and laughing and tripping over all the stories they want to tell. jester saw kiri and taught her some new songs! she’s still very sweet. luke misses bryce so they’re going to alfield tomorrow. shakaste stopped by the blooming grove and sends his regards; there’s a letter for beau from keg on the mantle, she finally learned to spell her name.

there are enough rooms in the house in nicodranas, but somehow everyone ends up bedded down on the floor in the living room, right by the fire. it’s not the tiny hut, but it’s close, what with everyone’s snoring and snorting and occasional kicking.

and they all lived happily ever after. the end.

#under the cut #critical role #critical role spoilers #critical role meta #but mostly like awful rambly meta #dont mind me im just word vomiting #mighty nein #widojest has not evolved to the point where i can see them having a happily ever after YET #a couple dozen episodes might do it #all depends on how caleb evolves as a person #caleb literally cant. be romantic rn. he's still healing

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