The Bone That Has No Marrow

by violettressed

Summary:

“Beauregard – you said she is outside?” Essek half-turns in the direction of the front door. “Should we invite her in?”

It feels like there is something stuck in his throat. “In a moment. She is, ah – giving us some space.”

Essek turns back to stare at him. Repeats quietly, dangerously, “Space.”

Caleb forces himself to swallow. “Yes.”

Essek’s attention is a palpable thing now, sharp like a knife’s edge against his cheek. “Explain.”

One moment makes all the difference during the battle at Blumenthal. In the aftermath, the Nein grapple with what comes next.

“For the record,” Beauregard says quietly, “I still think this is fucked.”

Every muscle in her body is stiff, registering danger and yet having nothing to punch. She’s doing an admirable job of projecting the level of ease expected for a stroll in a quiet neighborhood – arms draped lazily over her bo staff where it balances across her shoulders, face tilted up as if admiring the emerging stars – but Caleb has spent the better part of six years living in her pocket. He knows she is looking anywhere but at him.

Perhaps it is the bruise on his cheekbone, unable to be blotted away by Jester’s magic. Maybe it’s just his face right now. He wouldn’t blame her. The fact that she is talking to him at all is better than he expected, and so he makes an effort to talk back.

“You may recall that this was not my first choice either, Beauregard.”

Her face scrunches up unhappily at the sound of her name and – hm. Perhaps he is not allowed to use it. He makes a mental note.

They walk in silence down the sleepy Rexxentrum street, the arcane streetlights gone unnaturally dim. Nowhere is safe from the ramifications of Ludinus’ work, it seems. He is sure that his own house is a wreck, but he takes a moment to be grateful, once again, that he does not live any closer to the Candles. Eight wizard towers gone berserk have almost certainly leveled the surrounding neighborhood. He passes a good minute in silence imagining Trent’s old tower blowing apart: Caleb has been trying to convince Astrid to rebuild the damn thing in its entirety for years.

As they pass the turn where Beauregard would usually peel off to her own home – if this was their usual commute and not an unfortunate errand at the end of the world – she clears her throat and says, “If this ever happens to me and you do this to Yasha, I’ll kill you.”

It would sound like a genuine threat if not for the faintest tremor in her voice. This has been a long, terrible few weeks for Beauregard, culminating in a series of brutal failures. He cannot fault her for this, when he truly doesn't know how he would react in her place.

“For what it is worth, you have my word that I will not.” He almost adds her name at the end, before he remembers. She tenses like she heard it anyway.

Regret sits heavy in his chest, an old companion, but no matter how painful this excursion is for Beauregard, it is also partially her fault. She could have sided with him against the others. She could have volunteered as messenger when it became clear that the majority believed Essek should be informed. She could have let him come here alone to do so.

They come to a stop before the cottage with green beans growing in the window boxes. What would be a quaint home in the day has become an empty, looming shell in the late twilight. The windows are dark and shuttered, the garden out front beginning to overgrow without attention these past few weeks. Despite the abandoned air of the place, he reminds himself that light is not something Essek requires: his friend could easily be inside, relying on keener eyes than Caleb’s. He takes a deep breath and flexes his hands, loosely preparing the somatic for Counterspell.

“Hey.” He turns to Beauregard, whose goggles are now securely in place. It reminds Caleb of the smoked glasses Essek wears in Nicodranas, obscuring the eyes from scrutiny in addition to its primary benefits. Maybe she’s trying to hide the red puffiness of her eyes from earlier. “You sure you want me to wait out here?”

If it is just Essek inside, he will still likely be on guard, prepared for an intrusion. Being outnumbered will only make him upcast before he can realize who they are. If it is not Essek at all, better him than her.

“Ja. I will send you a message when things are…” He doesn’t say good. Essek has taught him a great deal about potentiality, but there is no timeline where things end up good inside that house. Instead, he casts around for something more neutral and lands weakly on, “Settled.”

He might not be able to see her eyes, but Caleb knows that look. “Right. Well. Good luck, I guess.”

The iron gate creaks as he pushes it open, tasting the outermost of the house’s wards as he goes. There are some gaps, certainly, but they’re more intact than he dared to hope. Perhaps Essek has been busy.

He follows the overgrown cobblestones up the short path, not bothering to keep his footsteps light. As he stops at the threshold, he pulls out a recently acquired copper wire and holds it to his mouth. Pictures Essek inside and casts.

“Don’t be alarmed. It’s me at the door. If you can hear this, I will assume the inner wards have been compromised. If you are alone, please reply to this message. Otherwise, clear your throat if you have company.”

He waits as the spell dissipates, holding his breath so as not to miss a subtle reply. Before him, the house looms dark and silent. When a minute passes without a response, he is forced to believe that either the wards have held or Essek is not home at all. The coward in him hopes for the latter, but either way, he will have to enter to be sure. With one last glance over his shoulder at Beauregard, he slips a key from his inner pocket and inserts it into the lock.

Caleb’s magic dances around the doorframe as a series of enchantments verify the key, tasting him for traces of familiar arcana. He tenses for a moment, uncertain, but the wards part easily as the lock flips under his touch. Caleb’s magic has not changed, after all, and he still has some left. He tries to take some comfort in that as he pushes the door open and steps inside.

The entryway is predictably dark as he shuts the door behind him. Along the walls, scarves and coats hang from the same pegs where Caleb left them a handful of weeks ago. A neat line of boots crowds the left side of the hall, a small stool on the right, the top of which is covered in unopened mail.

It would be quaint, domestic even, if his hands weren’t held before him in the first position for a spell. Caleb and Essek are soft with each other, encouraging those parts in one another, but they are, first and foremost, still men with teeth. Teeth, and no shortage of enemies.

He strains to listen for anything: a footstep, a cat jump, an opened door. All of the hinges creak in this house. Caleb designed it that way.

But tonight the house stands unnaturally still, as if holding its breath alongside him.

He breathes deep the smell of arcana and dust, letting it linger in his lungs, and then calls out, in poorly accented Undercommon, “Dear? It is me, are you – ”

Essek will deny being a war mage, but the speed at which the first spell comes for Caleb cannot be overstated: he only manages to counter because the somatic was already prepared. The second spell follows quickly on its heels, upcast – he will tease Essek for this later, if his friend does not kill him first – and this time his Counterspell is far less smooth. He can feel the air around him charge before he manages to unravel it.

Preparing for a third attack, and painfully aware of the precious magic this is costing him, he shouts, “Essek! A moment of your time, bitte. The cats will never forgive you if you kill me in the entryway.”

He still needs the third Counterspell, batting away something that tastes like lightning, but a fourth spell does not follow. Any invisibility Essek was using has likely fallen away by now, but his human eyes are struggling in the dark. He takes a moment to mourn the transmuter’s stone he left shattered on Blumenthal’s battlefield this morning as he catches his breath.

“Thank you,” he says into the tentative, uneasy silence. “I am going to cast some light now. Just my cantrip. Please do not attack.”

Essek beats him to it. Four globules of green-hued light bob into existence in the hallway before him, casting Caleb’s home in shades not unlike the streets of Rosohna. They illuminate Essek, hovering atop the bottommost stair, his hands still braced before him in the first somatic of something lethal.

“Ah. Thank you, dear.” He tosses up a few of his own to supplement, adding amber lights to the green, and doesn’t miss the twitch of Essek’s fingers as he does so. Nothing about Essek’s posture relaxes with the addition of the lights, but it gives Caleb more context: his friend’s hair is notably disheveled and some of his usual finery is missing. There is also the faintest trace of blood beneath his nose. Carefully, keeping an eye on Essek, he makes a show of dropping his hands entirely. Softly, so as not to spook him further, he says, “I see we have both had quite the day.”

Day. Week. Month. He’s not sure how much of the misery he’s allowed to claim, but his head is full of it and there is no one to stop him, unless he mentions it in front of Beauregard.

“Identify yourself,” Essek says, cold mask securely affixed. He has dredged up the demeanor of the Shadowhand tonight, the most recent of many ghosts today. Essek has not survived so long on the run without this shield, even if it chafes something in Caleb to be held at its face now.

It is not quite a lie to reply, “I am Caleb Widogast, wizard of the Mighty Nein, owner of this home, and friend to Essek Thelyss.” He casts around for any small, curious faces, and adds, “I am also the caretaker of Marta, Rudi, and Mitzi, who appear to be absent. I will assume you’ve shut the cats away to keep them from danger. Thank you.”

Only then do Essek’s hands begin to lower, the tension in his shoulders slipping from that of an active combatant to the baseline of an incredibly stressed individual. He blinks rapidly as the mask begins to fracture. “Caleb?”

He forces himself to nod. “Beauregard is outside, if you would like her to corroborate.” He takes a tentative step forward and, perhaps foolish in his optimism, holds open his arms. Just wide enough to offer without any pressure. Caleb knows that Essek is selective with his touch, to the point of forgetting that he is able to ask for it now.

In a measure of exactly how poorly the last few days have gone, Essek makes a broken little sound somewhere in the base of his throat and, between one eye blink and the next, Misty Steps directly into Caleb’s outstretched arms. He wheezes as Essek’s arms appear around his torso, gripping him as though he might disappear. For all the times that Caleb has hugged him, it takes a moment for his arms to remember what to do, carefully wrapping around Essek and holding him close, mindful not to crush the delicate frame of his shoulders. He marvels quietly at the feeling of Essek’s too-quick breath against the skin of his throat, the strength of the hold that he finds himself in. It is no hardship to bury his nose in Essek’s hair, pressing a quick kiss to his temple on the way.

(Perhaps this is presumptuous. Perhaps Essek will hate him for this later. Perhaps it is cruel to offer him false comfort like this. Beauregard would think so.)

In his arms, Essek is shaking – fine vibrations, like one of Jester’s tuning forks, barely noticeable except for how closely they’re pressed together. Essek’s accent is more pronounced than usual, his voice small and strained, when he says, “I have been trying to contact you since word of the red moon reached me. Nothing was getting through, and I thought – I thought – ”

How do you hold someone you love and tell them it is even worse than it appears? He does so by saying, “Come. Let’s sit on the couch. You’ll be more comfortable there.”

Essek goes easily, deposited onto the cushions while Caleb sets about lighting a fire in the hearth. Thankfully it is only the work of a cantrip to do so, and by the time he turns around, he sees that Essek has utilized a cantrip of his own: the tear marks have been stripped from his cheeks and the lay of his hair is neater. His friend is a vain bastard, and Caleb loves him dearly. He wishes doing so would hurt a little less.

“I will ask you to tell me everything,” Essek begins crisply, all business, “but first: the others? Are they alright? Is everyone accounted for?”

The new steadiness of Essek’s voice is undercut slightly by how quickly he reaches for Caleb as he takes a seat beside him: between the two of them, Caleb usually runs hotter, but tonight Essek’s hands are the warm ones as he grips just a shade too tight. The point of contact is helpful, though. Steadying. He isn’t really even sure where to begin.

“Everyone is accounted for,” he says, because that is the simplest of Essek’s questions, “except for Kingsley, but we have no reason to believe he’s in any danger.”

“Good,” Essek says firmly, nodding along. “Beauregard – you said she is outside?” He half-turns in the direction of the front door. “Should we invite her in?”

It feels like there is something stuck in his throat. “In a moment. She is, ah – giving us some space.”

Essek turns back to stare at him. Repeats quietly, dangerously, “Space.”

He forces himself to swallow. “Yes.”

Essek’s attention is a palpable thing now, sharp like a knife’s edge against his cheek. “Explain.”

Perhaps it is cowardly, but he returns to Essek’s questions. “You asked if the others are alright.” Essek operated as a courtier for too long, and it still shows in how his expression smoothes over when he panics. The man before him could be made of marble, and there is no comforting platitude, no guaranteed solution, he can offer to soften him. For a lack of anything else to do, he continues, “Veth is safe at home with her family and the campers. Jester and Fjord are there by now, too, I assume. Dropping Luc home – it is a long story, but he is safe. Yasha has accompanied Caduceus back to the Grove, where I hope you will be amenable to join them, along with Beauregard and myself after this.”

He can track Essek’s arithmetic by the crease that forms in his brow. “That is everyone.”

The only way to get the words out is to keep talking, ignoring Essek’s obvious question. He decides to feel badly about that later, if there is a later at all.

“After being shunted from the key site in Marquet – I believe you know the one – it became apparent that Trent Ikithon had, ah… slipped his chain, as it were.” Essek is staring, eyes boring into his face badly enough that he has to look away. “He left a series of messages – empty threats – in the Cobalt Soul Archive for us, following a robbery there. We went to meet him in – in Blumenthal.” Essek’s grip on his hand is going to break a bone soon, and he hasn’t even had a chance to explain that it will never heal. “There was a battle. At the former Ermendrud residence. Trent merged with something unspeakably ancient and evil, but we, ah, managed to seal it, in the end. He is gone for good.”

It feels pathetic to try and spin this tale into a success, especially when it is clear that Essek is having none of it. When he finally gathers enough bravery to look up, Essek’s fury is nearly palpable under a cold veneer of stoicism.

“You followed that man into an ambush,” Essek says, each word enunciated with piercing clarity.

“We did,” he says, because mincing words will gain him nothing here.

“You say you sealed him successfully.”

This has the makings of a trap, but all he can say is, “Yes.”

“So why,” Essek asks, each word cold and distinct as hail lashing against bare skin, “is Beauregard waiting outside?”

Caleb’s thoughts are a mess of moments, all too-crisp in their clarity with no erosion over time to smooth their sharp edges. Each time he snapped at Essek, each time he hurt him, intentionally or otherwise, each time Essek shed tears before him, distraught or furious or in love –

And then the new memories, less than a day’s worth, just as crisp and yet distinct from the rest: the smell of smoke in the early Blumenthal morning, the weight of Luc on his back, the taste of arcana and divinity in the air. The screams as Caleb, already charred and bruised, went down like a man who was already just a body, lightning jumping from his corpse to the bodies of their friends. The stillness after battle that became the horrified silence of realization. Jester’s divinity, failing. Caduceus’ divinity, failing. The transmuter’s stone in his hands, failing. Beauregard’s fist colliding with his face as she shouted, “What’s the point of you, then?”

“Caleb.” Essek would hate to hear it, but he is a lot like Beauregard. He, too, sounds angry when he’s scared.

“I am so sorry,” he says, because he really, really is. Caleb was trying to get home. Caleb was trying to protect Essek. Caleb was trying to save the town that gave him a childhood before the Empire made him a murderer. “He – I am not – I am just – ”

Essek is a clever man. Moreover, he is a capable wizard who has seen the inside of Caleb’s spellbook. Caleb remembers showing Essek the latest entry, which means he remembers, too. He has all of Caleb’s memories. Is made of snow and memory and very little else.

Before him, Essek is frozen. Staring. Then, mouth barely moving at all, he murmurs, “Simulacrum.”

It is not a question.

“I am sorry – ” The rest dies in his throat. Is this all he can say now?

Essek doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. They slip from Caleb’s grasp, but don’t go far; Essek reaches out and touches his face, fingertips ghosting over the bruise that Beauregard left there. Traces the line of his jaw, the beard there, before sinking to rest a palm atop his chest, as if checking for a heartbeat. Essek’s gaze stays trained on it, deadly focused.

They sit there like that for some time, until Essek’s hand tenses, fingers curling around a fistful of Caleb’s shirt.

“Essek – ”

The hand flies to his throat too quickly to dodge as Essek’s head snaps up, teeth bared. It doesn’t hurt, but he can feel the blunt edges of Essek’s nails against his skin. A warning. His eyes are overly bright, tears shining but unshed, as he hisses, “Do not.”

Perhaps the worst part is that he understands. For however much he feels like Caleb, to the others he is only a Caleb-shaped thing. Quietly, he rasps, “Would you like me to fetch Beauregard now?”

Maybe it’s because Essek is looking him in the eye this time, or maybe it is because he hates hearing Caleb’s voice in distress, but Essek releases him, sitting back and putting a careful distance between them on the couch. He turns away, looking directly ahead, and smooths out an invisible wrinkle in his trousers.

“I think that would be best,” says the Shadowhand.

§

“That bad, huh?” Beauregard asks when the front door swings open. She pushes her goggles up onto her forehead when she sees the lights on inside. With a halting, awkward pat to his shoulder, she pushes past him and says, “Time to face the music, I guess.”

He doesn’t follow when she stalks into the living room, instead choosing to wander up the stairs. As he – or rather, Caleb – assumed, their bedroom door is closed. When he pushes it open with a faint creak, three feline faces immediately appear in a bid to escape.

“Hallo,” he murmurs, dropping to a knee and offering his fingers for them to sniff. He waits for Rudi to jump up and try to burrow into his coat, for Marta to start up her usual howling, but instead, all three cats give him either a cautious sniff or a wide berth before darting down the stairs. Something bruised in him aches as he watches them go. Carefully, gingerly, he stands and waits to see if any of them return.

They do not.

The sound of an argument filters up from the sitting room, which is expected, if not entirely welcome. When he steps a little closer to the stairwell, he hears Beauregard shout, “Well he didn’t die in your arms, so frankly I’d like to hear a little fucking less from you about it,” which does make him a little jealous of Caleb for not having to listen to this, on account of being dead.

Some remnant of self-preservation prompts him to give them some space. In the meantime, he slips into the bedroom and picks his way to the dresser, careful not to touch or disturb anything else. He doesn’t imagine that Essek would take too kindly to him being in here at all, but his clothes are torn and covered in a mix of soot and blood, and the thought of stripping Caleb’s body for replacements earlier had seemed callous. He’d thought Beauregard was going to kill him, then and there, when he’d been forced to retrieve the house key from Caleb’s coat.

He sticks to items that Caleb owns multiples of – simple linen shirts, dark trousers – and helps himself to a few more spare components from the workroom. A bath, like several other orders of business, will have to wait until they arrive at the Grove. By the time he wanders downstairs, Beauregard and Essek have simmered into a tense silence, neither looking at the other. Something does warm in his chest, though, when he notices all three cats curled around Essek, one on his lap and the other two loafing at his sides.

His friends – Caleb’s friends – turn to look when the final stair reliably creaks under his boot. Maybe it’s a trick of the firelight, but some of the color drains from Beauregard’s face. All he can do is grimace apologetically and make his way to the chair furthest from both of them.

“Good. You’re here,” Beauregard says after a long, tense moment. Essek is busy staring very hard at the cat in his lap; his face is dry, but every muscle in his body is taut with an unhealthy tension. It makes him seem more angular, like he’s wearing his old mantle instead of his house clothes. Beauregard scuffs her boot on Caleb’s rug and says, “We should probably get moving.”

She isn’t wrong – there is work to be done at the Grove – but her tone is the same one she had used after being shunted from the key yesterday. What Beauregard really means is: I need to get to Yasha. He understands. He very carefully does not look at where Essek sits on the couch. Yes, he understands.

They would likely say it isn’t his place to worry, but – “What about the cats?”

At the sound of Caleb’s voice, Marta perks up, obviously confused by the lack of a familiar smell to go along with it. Essek pets her until she settles down again.

“We’re taking the cats,” Beauregard says with the air of someone who’s already lost an argument. “Good project for Clarabelle or whatever.”

He nods. It will be good for Essek to have them, too, no matter how much he insists they are little pests. For something to do, he stands and says, “I will fetch their carriers, then.”

“Carriers,” he hears Beauregard scoff as he darts out of the room. “Fucking ridiculous.”

By the time the cats are herded into their respective travel baskets, Essek is wrapped up in a large purple cloak and radiating untouchability. It has something to do with the tilt of his chin and the minimal lack of eye contact. He’s also floating again, tall enough that Caleb has to look up like a child starving for unearned attention.

“Hey, Caleb Two or whatever, you got us?” Beauregard asks, adjusting the baskets in her hands.

That is a complicated question. He does technically have enough magical reserves to get them to the Grove, but –

“I will take us,” Essek says, voice so smooth and dismissive that they might have been standing in the halls of the Lucid Bastion. Beauregard obviously notices, if the wrinkle of her nose is any indication, but Essek pays her no mind as he shakes back his sleeves and says, “As a simulacrum cannot regenerate magical resources, we ought not to rely on him unless absolutely necessary. Shall we?”

Beauregard’s brow furrows, but she doesn’t say anything. Without waiting for further input, Essek extinguishes the fireplace with a wave and a teleport pulls them all away.

§

Essek goes directly to Caleb’s body as soon as they arrive in the night-darkened Grove. No one really tries to stop him, except for Beauregard yelling after him, “Okay, I guess I’ll just hold your cats!”

“I will take them,” he says as the door to the Clay family home swings shut behind Essek. Beauregard gives him a shrewd look, but hands over the baskets anyway.

“You know, I don’t want to make excuses for him,” she says, the weight of her gaze heavy on him as he checks over the carriers, “but I did tell you it was a fucked up way to break the news.”

“Ja, well, perhaps you should have listened when I told you it was a bad idea to involve him,” he replies, fiddling with one of the carrier’s straps. It had come down to her vote, back in Blumenthal. Caduceus had led Luc away, soothing the beginnings of panic with his magic, and amongst those who remained, Jester had been the most adamant that Essek be told, followed by Yasha. Fjord had agreed with Caleb. But despite Beauregard tipping the scales, none of them had volunteered to carry out the task. Only when Jester, tears starting to track through the soot on her face, had begun to dredge up the heart to do so, had Caleb folded. He’d thought to ease her suffering as well as Essek’s, even against his own wishes, but see how that turned out. Petulantly, he tells Beauregard, “At least he has not punched me yet.”

He fully expects to get hit again, but when a blow doesn’t come, he risks a look to find her glaring down at him, her face lined with strange shadows from the lantern hanging at the door of the Clay residence. The silence strains for a moment and then –

“Gods, I fucking hate that you’re basically him,” she says before storming off.

He gets the cats inside, making their apologies for the late hour, and shows Clarabelle the food and water the cats require, teaching her each of their names. She takes to their keeping easily enough, happy to help, even if he is certain that they will be outdoor cats by the end of the week.

A problem for the other Caleb, if he has anything to say about it.

The Clays, all in their nightclothes, are very polite to him, possibly because they do not understand exactly what a simulacrum is, but he tries not to linger in the busiest spaces for long. He makes eye contact with Yasha from across the living room before she looks away sharply, back to bringing Beauregard something to eat. It has been a very long day for all of them, after all.

He could cast the Tower – it was one of the spells that Caleb had prepared when he was created – but it seems wiser to save the energy for an emergency teleport. It is also fairly likely that such a familiar spell would cause more grief than comfort, and he is trying very hard to step on as few toes as possible. The bruise from Beauregard’s fist still throbs under gentle probing, and it is a good reminder. He cannot risk another show like the failure with the transmuter's stone, not with tensions so high and emotions so volatile.

Tomorrow, the clerics will reach out with their questions. Perhaps someone can press Essek for his thoughts, as well. If divine magic has reached its limits for the duration of the solstice, well – then he will have his answer. But regardless of what he can do, of what arcane solution he can offer, he will not attempt anything in front of the others. Not again. He remembers the exact look on Beauregard’s face before she hit him, and it was worse than any blow. No matter how many more punches he can take, the raw grief of his friends – their hope pulped into a bloody gristle of despair – is what he cannot stomach.

By the time midnight comes, he finds himself curled up in a corner of the Clays’ living room, settling in for what is technically the second sleep of this body’s existence. It does not come easily, and when rest finally takes him, he dreams of Caleb’s blood on his hands. Perhaps he should be more surprised that the nightmares have followed him to this form as well, but when he wakes, there is only stiffness and a very familiar kind of misery on his tongue.

Caduceus rises just as the dawn begins to turn gray, and together they take a quiet breakfast before the others wake up. Essek has certainly already finished his trance, but the door that Caleb’s body rests behind remains firmly shut. He chooses to feel nothing about that, because he really doesn’t have the right.

“I know this is going to be a ridiculous question, considering the circumstances,” Caduceus says as they eat, “but are you doing okay?”

He absently stirs his oatmeal. “It’s okay, Caduceus. You do not need to look after me like that. I’m not a real boy.” At Caduceus’ blank stare, he adds, “Sorry. It’s a – Zemnian children’s story. About a puppet.” He feels horribly foolish. This man has lost a friend. To his oatmeal, he mumbles, “Poor taste. My apologies.”

“Hey, you won’t find a better group for dark humor,” Caduceus rumbles kindly. Too kindly. Then, after a moment: “You might not be Caleb, but that doesn’t mean you’re nobody.”

The few bites of breakfast he’s managed to get down churn unhappily in his stomach. “That’s very kind of you to say.”

“Just something to think about,” Caduceus says lightly. “Help me with the dishes after this?”

An hour or two later, Essek emerges to accept a cup of tea and answer several questions with one-word answers before disappearing back to his vigil. Beauregard slinks out of bed shortly after that, flinching at the sight of the bruise on his face but saying nothing else. Yasha manages a quiet good morning, even if her eyes stay averted.

“This is bleak,” Clarabelle tells him, walking past with Mitzi purring contentedly in her arms.

Jester arrives with the rest around noon, coming by way of the small shrine down the road. He makes himself scarce without having to be told: Veth is with them, if all went according to plan, and she will want to see Caleb’s body first. Fjord eventually finds him out by the pond, drying in the sun after a much-needed bath. He’s redonned Caleb’s clothes, rolling the pants up to the knee and dangling his feet in the pond. It’s cooler than Caleb remembers, but the water feels nice against his skin. He absently wonders if some part of this body remembers being snow.

“Hello, ah, Caleb Two is it? Caleb the Second? What are we calling you now?”

“Mostly everyone is doing their best to pretend I do not exist,” he replies lightly, “so take your pick.” He gestures to the open stretch of grassy bank beside him. “You’re welcome to enjoy the water if you’d like. I won’t be staying long.”

There are the quiet sounds of boots being unbuckled – quite a few buckles, actually, Caleb had been meaning to tease him goodnaturedly about it – and then Fjord sits beside him and dunks his bare feet into the pond as well. A quick glance shows that he’s still in the clothes from their fight yesterday – soot-marked and torn in a place or two – but his hair is twisted up into a bun and his face is clean. He looks untouched. The benefits of a live-in cleric, Caleb supposes.

“I think I’d like to call you Caleb Two, if that’s alright with you,” Fjord says amiably, lazily kicking his feet back and forth. “I don’t know how long it will take to bring him back, or how long you’ll be with us, but it feels weird to ignore you just because – he’s. You know. Dead.”

“Caleb Two is fine.”

Fjord clears his throat awkwardly. “Great.”

The silence stews for a few minutes as the Grove hums around them, birds and insects busy at work, until he can’t help but ask, “Is Luc okay?”

If Fjord is surprised by the question, he doesn’t show it. With a sigh, he says, “He’s a little shaken. We talked it over with Veth. As soon as Caleb is back on his feet, I’m sure he’ll want to see him.”

“Ja.” He feels terribly heavy, like Essek has fiddled with the gravity around him. “He probably will.”

Luc had cried, in Blumenthal. He’d had to peel Luc off the body to let the clerics work, but when it became clear that Caleb wasn’t coming back, Luc had burrowed into his coat and started sobbing into his shirt as Caduceus tended to the corpse at their feet. Beauregard had pulled Luc away, shoving the boy at Jester and saying, “You’re just gonna fucking confuse him, man.”

Maybe she was right. He isn’t Luc’s godfather, after all. Caleb is. Was.

Jester finds them before long, the rustle of her skirts announcing her arrival. She flops down on Caleb’s other side, and before he can open his mouth, he finds a pastry thrust in his direction.

“Here!” Jester says, wiggling it before his nose as if that will make it more appetizing. Mostly it just gets flakes of sugar on his pants. She has one for herself in her other hand, some sort of puff pastry that leaves a smear of cream on her cupid’s bow when she takes a large bite. Mouth full, she shoves the spare pastry a little further into his personal space and says, “It’s fresh, I promise!”

“That’s only mostly true,” Fjord advises in an undertone.

He takes the pastry before she pokes him in the eye with it. Jester beams at him, satisfied, before cramming the rest of her cream puff in her mouth and immediately turning to fish inside her bag for another.

“It’s such good luck that we stocked up in port, because I love Caduceus to bits, but he doesn’t use any cinnamon in his recipes and it really just isn’t the same without it,” she chatters along, pulling out another paper-wrapped baked good. She unwraps it a bit, as if to make sure it’s the one she wants, before she shoves that in his direction as well. He barely manages to catch it. “That one is so good, I think they put raspberries in it? But you have to try it. And – ” Jester goes back to rummaging. “ – there’s this vanilla one that’s just – ”

“Jester,” he says a little helplessly. He’s running out of hands.

Fjord mercifully intervenes. “Jester, why don’t you save some for later?”

She looks up from her rucksack. Up close, finally still, he can pick out the faint shadows under her eyes. There’s a small mark on her lip from where she worries at it with her fang when she’s stressed. Jester does so now, just for a moment, a flash of white eyetooth against the swell of her lip, before she forces a smile.

“Right! For the others. Of course.” She bumps her shoulder against his and adds conspiratorially, “But you get first dibs, okay? You just say the word. I’ll save one of each for you.”

The last thing he wants is pastries, but he forces a smile for her anyway. “Thank you.” Clearing his throat, he asks, “How is Veth doing?”

Jester’s smile flickers like a spell she nearly loses concentration on. She manages to hold onto it in the end, but there’s a strain to it, even as her voice remains light. “Oh, well, you know. It’s Veth.”

That could mean anything from an assassination to an explosion. Jester’s eyes fall away from his as she carefully studies her skirt, picking at one of the ruffles there. Silently, he holds out the raspberry pastry to her.

She brightens slightly, flashing him a smile and taking it. The paper wrapping crackles as she unwraps it, breaking off a piece and popping it in her mouth. Maybe he imagines it, but she seems to chew for longer than necessary before swallowing and saying, “I think she’ll be done soon. She’s probably going to want to talk to you.”

“I am at her disposal.”

Jester’s nose wrinkles as she glances at him. “Don’t say it like that.” Studying him for a moment, she adds, “You don’t have to talk to her if you don’t want to, you know. You get a say.”

The pastry in his left hand is melting, the sugar growing tacky on his fingertips. “I want to talk to her.”

That doesn’t seem to appease her, if the way her mouth turns down is any indication. Carefully, like he might spook, Jester reaches out like Essek had to brush a thumb over the bruise on his cheek. She’s almost certainly left a streak of powdered sugar behind. “Do you want me to try and heal it again?”

It is a kind thought, if an empty gesture. He gently removes her hand from his face, squeezing it before setting it in her lap. “Better to save your magic, I think.”

“Beau shouldn’t have hit you,” Jester says, bristling slightly. He can hear Fjord’s quiet sigh behind him.

He tries for levity, even offering her a half-decent smile when he says, “But when has that ever stopped her before, hm?”

And there really isn’t a good answer for that at all.

Veth is waiting for him inside at the table usually used for meals, a small plate of untouched sandwiches before her. She looks like she’s been crying, but at the very least, he doesn’t get a crossbow bolt anywhere serious. He hands his unwanted pastry off to Fjord, who shoves the entire thing in his mouth for lack of a better place to put it, and pulls Jester away to give them some privacy. It’s the last thing he wants, but maybe Jester hadn’t been serious about letting him make choices. Either way, soon enough it’s just Veth and him alone in the room.

Caleb isn’t sure what to do with his hands once he’s done wiping the crumbs and sugar from his fingers. She stares at him, her own hands clasped in front of her, but she doesn’t say a word. Perhaps that is his sign to begin, then. Awkwardly, softly, he says, “Hallo.”

Maybe avoiding using everyone’s names is working, because she doesn’t flinch. Just sighs, which – might be worse, actually. When he doesn’t say anything more, Veth asks, “He created you to look after my boy?”

Cutting right to the chase, then. At least it is an easy question. He nods.

Veth watches him for a moment longer before her gaze falls to her lap. “Well, Luc’s home in one piece, so…” He thinks for a second she might stop there, but then she adds, notably stiffer, “...thanks. For that.”

“Of course.” Then, perhaps foolishly: “I wish I could have done more.”

That earns him a sharp look. It’s starting to get uncomfortable, hovering awkwardly while she sits, but his feet feel glued to the floorboards. He swallows and grips his forearms just for something to hold onto.

At last, Veth says, “You did a lot. A lot more than me.” Which is – not the point at all –

“Veth – ”

He’s forgotten about the names, but she doesn’t react, just keeps talking over him. “If I had come with them, he might still be here. Hells, if I’d even been able to control my own son, he wouldn’t have needed a babysitter and then you could have had Caleb’s back instead. Don’t try to tell me I’m wrong.”

If Luc hadn’t tagged along, Caleb would not have cast a simulacrum at all. He’s as certain about that as he is the rest of Caleb’s thoughts, but it feels dangerously unwise to tell her so.

“We can’t know,” he chooses to say instead.

Veth grumbles something unintelligible before she says, “Sit down, will you? I’m assuming you inherited his bad knees. You’re making me ache just looking at you.”

Her permission seems to unstick his boots from the floor, at least. Warily, he pulls out a chair on the other side of the table, telegraphing his movements to keep her at ease. When he’s finally seated, she shoves the plate of sandwiches towards him and stares expectantly, not looking away until he’s taken one and eaten a small bite from its corner.

“We’ll sort it out,” Veth says firmly, staring down at her hands. “We always do.”

The bite of sandwich in his stomach churns anxiously to the tune of a ninth-level spell and a neat bit of arithmetic that may not balance in their favor – either way, he’ll know by tonight if no other options exist. For now, he opts to keep silent, and thankfully, Veth does not seem to expect him to say more. She only glances up, looking more at the sandwich in his hand than his face, and says, “Eat up. The others should be here soon.”

He forces another bite down. It’s slightly more palatable than Jester’s pastry, at least. Moreover, it seems to placate Veth, if the slow loosening of her shoulders is any indication. He’d choke down a feast if it would wipe the pain from her expression.

The others wander in eventually, individually and in pairs, bringing other dishes from the kitchen. Jester plants herself on his right and Fjord, likely on her orders, gestures for Beauregard to join him at the opposite end of the table. Caduceus fills the seat to his left, and he takes a moment to consider being offended at just how obviously he is being handled. The thought doesn’t last long, however, because someone has managed to lure Essek out of Caleb’s room. He doesn’t look well – still in last night’s clothes and looking uncharacteristically rumpled – but he takes a seat between Fjord and Yasha with minimal fanfare.

Lunch becomes an impromptu brainstorming session where everyone talks over one another with their mouths full. It would be generous to call it planning, really, when the most constructive thought comes from Jester, mouth full of pastry, gesturing with both hands and shouting, “I don’t know what you’re all arguing about when we obviously just need to shove the moon back up and everything will work again!”

Caleb doesn’t miss Essek subtly massaging his temple, eyes very far from the chaos of their lunch table. The next time Clarabelle walks past with one of the cats, he flags her down and whispers, “Can you fetch the orange one, Rudi? I think our drow friend could use some better company.”

A few minutes later – Veth now standing in her chair and leaning over the table to better yell at Beauregard – Clarabelle dumps Rudi in Essek’s lap and walks away before he can say anything. Indeed, Essek barely seems to notice, his hand automatically falling into Rudi’s fur and beginning to pet him absently. It warms something in his chest, even if Essek has yet to touch his food.

“Alright,” Fjord says after some time, evidently beginning to develop a headache of his own. “To paraphrase: our best bet is to unfuck the fucked up moon. Do I have that right?”

“Yeah!” Jester agrees loudly at the same time Veth snaps, “Well it sounds ridiculous when you say it like that.”

Caleb’s been quiet the entire time, doing his best to blend into the furniture, but he cannot help but add quietly, “As opposed to the other times, when it sounded so reasonable.”

That earns him a smirk from Veth and a good-natured middle finger from Fjord, but he doesn’t expect the small, private smile from Essek, who seems to forget for a moment that his actual partner is dead. He remembers quickly enough, freezing before his shoulders go taut and the smile wipes from his face, but for a small moment before the hurt sets in, it’s… nice. Caleb enjoyed Essek’s attention, so he tries not to fault himself for wanting the same.

Dishes are cleared away and the clerics begin to source questions from the group for their respective communions. Essek takes the opportunity to return to Caleb’s body, depositing Rudi into his chair before disappearing without comment; he has never begrudged the others their ties to the divine, but perhaps today Essek is at his limit.

“I think my first question obviously has to be about why my resurrection spell didn’t work,” Jester says, nervously fiddling with her holy symbol. Beauregard, playing scribe for this exercise, dutifully scratches that down. “It’s not exactly a yes or no question, but I have another spell I can use after I commune. I packed all of them today. Caduceus, is it worth asking the Wildmother the same thing? Like could the solstice be affecting the gods and the Traveler differently?”

“Yeah, I’d say they’re a little different,” Caduceus replies with uncharacteristic dryness. “Add that question to my list, too.”

Beauregard nods, quill darting across the page.

“What else?” Veth demands, looking between their faces. “Could we ask if there’s any other spells we could try? Ask if there’s someone we could go to who might know more?”

The exercise goes on and on until both clerics have their list of questions. Caleb sits quietly the entire time, waiting. When Caduceus leaves for the garden, mentioning vague plans about communing at – in? – the pond, and the others begin to disperse, he catches Jester before she ducks into an emptier room.

“I’m sorry,” he begins quickly, glancing around to make sure no one is watching with too much interest. Finding no eyes upon them, he says quietly, “I know your list is quite full, but I have a question that I am very curious about. Could I sneak one in?”

Jester doesn’t frown, but a sense of desperation does creep into her eyes as she says, “I don’t know, Caleb Two, I really only have a few I can ask and I kind of already have some of my own that I – well, not that Beau’s list isn’t great, but – ”

“I understand,” he says hurriedly, which does seem to relax her somewhat. He holds up a finger. “One question. Please. I will not tell the others if you go off script with the other two, I just need this one answered.”

She searches his face for a long moment, worrying her lip, before whispering, “What’s the question?”

“It is a little broader than what we discussed with the others,” he says, keeping his voice low. “I need to know if there is any way that your fey friend – or any god, really – can fix this without us solving our little, ah – moon problem first. Anything that can be done within his or your power.”

Jester regards him strangely, as if she doesn’t quite understand the purpose of the question, but slowly she says, “Alright.”

“Thank you,” he says fervently. He glances at the others. “I will, ah – leave you to it, then.”

She stares at him a beat longer, considering, but finally nods. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

When he returns to where the others are milling around the table, it’s to find Beauregard, vibrating with nervous energy, looking at her wife and saying, “I fucking hate feeling useless.” Without comment, Yasha tows her away by the hand, either to spar or have sex about it.

“It’s probably sex,” Veth tells him as he takes a seat across from her. This appears to be Fjord's limit, who leaves to follow Jester.

Veth sits with him at the table a while longer as they wait for the clerics to do their work. There is something calming about the quiet after such a raucous lunch. Reliably, it doesn’t last long, but at least it makes Veth smile when Jester’s voice from the other room shouts, “Come on, man, work with me here!” Followed by the aggrieved voice of a familiar archfey replying, at the same volume, “Jester, dear, I’ve told you, I don’t have a fucking clue what’s going on – ”

“Let us hope Caduceus’ communion is going smoother,” he murmurs, just to hear Veth laugh. She does, even if it’s just a huff, but it’s more than anyone else has given him in the past day.

Veth pulls out her spellbook eventually, the one Caleb had helped her put together in the beginning, and flips through its limited pages as if searching for an alternate form of arcane resurrection below the third level. Just like Jester’s offer to heal him earlier, it’s a nice thought, if not a particularly useful one. Perhaps Veth knows this, because when she glances up to catch him watching, she says, “Can’t hurt, right?”

“It cannot hurt,” he affirms quietly. Essek has likely done the same thing three times over by now.

“Do you have your spellbook?” Veth asks. At his raised eyebrow, she flaps a hand dismissively and adds, “Caleb’s spellbook. Whatever. It’s all semantics at this point.”

She might be the only one who thinks so. “It is with Caleb. I would not, ah… presume to have access to it.”

“Bullshit,” Veth huffs, narrowing her eyes. “Is Essek withholding it? I’ll happily go another round with him.”

It sours something in his stomach to imagine Essek fighting with each of the Nein in turn over his – Caleb’s – passing. He knows Essek is angry, that they all are grieving, but he wishes they would all put their claws away. It doesn’t help that his intervention would only make tensions worse: right now, all he can hope to do is deescalate.

“There is no need, Veth,” he tells her softly. “I have not asked for it.”

Her frown gets more pronounced, every inch of her bristling for a fight. “So you didn’t even get a chance to prepare your spells this morning?”

It is awfully kind of her. That is what he chooses to hold onto as he tells her, gently, as if breaking the news of Caleb’s death all over again, “There is no need. I know the spells I know, the ones Caleb had prepared when he cast me. I cannot learn any others.”

Veth stares at him, mind obviously trying to grapple with the concept. He understands her confusion, truly – he looks like Caleb, and to her, Caleb is a wizard who needs to prepare his spells. The dissonance is difficult.

At last, she says, “Okay. But couldn’t you look through Caleb’s spellbook anyway? Just for ideas?”

He has no desire to tell her that there isn’t a need: he knows the exact spell in Caleb’s spellbook that could fix this, down to the page number and the ink flecks on its corner. But it is at the height of his power, and not guaranteed to work. His only other experiences with arcane-based resurrections have been failures both times – see Mollymauk, left whole but still in Cognouza, and see Caleb, the same, just yesterday in Blumenthal. At least the cost for each of those had been a diamond and a stone. If he attempts this now and fails, Caleb will still be gone and he will be left without his highest magic to protect the others. Until a god – or something close, he supposes – tells him it is impossible otherwise, it is best to pursue other options.

It is not worth getting Veth’s hopes up with any of that, however. Smoothly, and without even technically lying, he says, “Even if I found something, I could not cast it unless it was a spell I had already prepared.”

“Essek has hands and half a brain,” Veth snaps, pushing her chair back and hopping off it. “I’m going to get your spellbook, and if we can find something that works, we’ll make him learn it.”

She is gone from the room before he can persuade her otherwise, leaving him to pick nervously at his sleeve as her knock echoes from down the hall. He hears the door open, then the faint sound of voices. Then slightly louder voices. It’s almost more concerning when things get quiet; he hopes she hasn’t killed him.

Veth emerges several minutes later with a large book in her hand, shadowed by a floating Essek, who looks as though someone has just cross-contaminated his powdered components. Essek doesn’t linger, staying just long enough to give them a cold lecture on not damaging or editing anything inside the book, and then he slinks back to his room.

“What does he think we’re going to do?” Veth huffs, unruffled by the display. “Draw dicks all over it? Like there aren’t plenty in there already.”

Caleb’s spellbook is an imposing leather tome, one that he has memories of holding a thousand times and yet has never actually touched with these hands. The glue on the spine cracks just like he remembers when he opens the cover, breathing deep the smell of quality paper and enchanted ink.

They work in companionable silence on their inevitably fruitless task, flipping through the spells available to them. It is an incredibly strange sensation to read over what he feels to be his own handwriting, making complete sense of what it is written there, only to look up and have the knowledge of how to actually cast the spell immediately slip away. Trying to remember only makes a point in his temple throb. He doesn’t even make it halfway through the spellbook before it blooms into a full-on headache.

“Break time,” Veth announces the third time she catches him wincing. “You want to take that back to Essek? He’s probably getting twitchy.”

It feels cowardly to ask her to do it, especially when she fetched it in the first place, but he almost does. No matter how much his mind understands, his feeble imitation heart can only take so much disregard. Still, Veth wouldn’t make him if she didn’t think he could handle it, and so he gathers up Caleb’s spellbook, taking extra care to ensure no pages have been creased in their handling, and goes to knock on Essek’s door.

There is a stretch of silence where he wonders if Essek plans to ignore him before it swings open. He’s floating, which would usually put them at eye level, but today Essek’s gaze remains carefully averted.

“The spellbook,” Caleb says, offering up the tome. Careful not to claim it as his or acknowledge it as Caleb’s. A neutral, non-thing, as if spellbooks were just tomes that fell out of the sky with no wizards attached. “Thank you for allowing us to look through it.”

Essek takes the book, very careful not to touch him in the process, and replies cooly, “Of course. One might argue that you have a greater claim to it than I do.”

He knows with immediate certainty that Essek does not believe that in the slightest, meaning it was likely Veth who made that argument. It is a neat little piece of bait, to see if he agrees or demurs. Unfortunately for Essek, Caleb was trained in similar ways, and he is a very good replica of Caleb.

“That is certainly an argument to be made,” he replies with a deferential dip of his head. “Regardless, thank you for lending it.”

And then, with the speed of a much more cowardly man, he flees.

§

Jester emerges before dinner looking tired and more than a bit annoyed, Fjord trailing silently behind her. Her heart doesn’t quite seem in it as she rants about the half-answers and useless information Artagan has provided her. By the time she pointedly asks what’s for dinner, everyone knows she’s said as much as she will. It is more, at least, than Caduceus, who tellingly says nothing about his communion at all.

While everyone begins to plan how to feed themselves, Jester pulls Caleb aside under the pretense of searching for a pitcher. Voice low, she says, “I asked him. He – he doesn’t think so? It’s all about the moon and the gods as far he can tell, everything tied up together.”

He hears what she is saying: the gods cannot help them. Even if the arcane is still suffering under the effects of the solstice, it is not as inhibited as divinity. The odds of an arcane resurrection have not improved with this information, but his mind has been made up: he has to try. For right now, it is their best option.

“Thank you,” he tells her seriously.

“Of course, Caleb Two,” Jester says softly, offering him a tired smile. Then, louder, for their little charade, “Ah, there it is! Can you reach the top shelf?”

Dinner is a haphazard meal outside, per Caduceus’ request that everyone get some air. Really, it is a chance for them to spread out and talk in smaller groups while they maintain the illusion that anyone has an appetite.

Essek doesn’t make an appearance, which he tucks away to worry about later. He would like to attempt to raise Caleb without any witnesses tonight, but if Essek cannot be pried away from the corpse, then he may not have a choice.

Everyone else borrows picnic blankets from the Clays and spreads out around the graves, chewing idly on nuts and berries and bits of raw vegetables. Plans for a soup meal have been pushed to tomorrow under the pretense of “having something to look forward to” (Jester’s words), which is a fairly good case of exactly how dire the mood has become.

He starts off sharing a blanket with Veth, but she obviously has something she wants to discuss with Beauregard and, after a bit of convincing, she slips away to do so. That leaves him alone, a fair distance from the other groups, but he chooses not to feel too badly about it. There is no shortage of baby carrots now, for example.

The night is a fairly warm one, all things considered, and he passes the time counting fireflies. When he runs out of those, he starts going over his magical reserves, doing his best to estimate how many spells he has before everything runs dry. Most of his high levels have been consumed by a combination of the battle and the teleportation circles afterwards, but he has a few left. He will make do with cantrips as long as he can, just in case – the others may require something from him, in time, or encounter a situation that demands –

“Hey!”

He looks up at Jester, who smiles down at him. Before he can reply, she says, “Just so you know, this is a duplicate, so I can’t hear anything you tell me, but I wanted to say you should come sit with us! Only if you want, though.”

Glancing around the duplicate, he sees Jester across the way, nestled next to Fjord but staring at Caleb with a small, tentative smile. It is muscle memory – though not from these muscles – to offer her a small smile back.

Before he can think of a way to respond, Jester’s duplicate adds, “Also, Caduceus said you didn’t really eat breakfast, so don’t think about skipping dinner, too. If you don’t like this stuff, I can create you some magic tofu goop, but it’s not gonna be pretty.”

The duplicate wiggles its fingers in the loose somatics of the spell that the clerics use for creating rations during long sea journeys. Caleb’s stomach remembers it as edible – most things are – but with a texture so terrible that it takes him a moment to shudder through the transplanted sense memory. When it passes, he still finds his stomach vaguely unsettled, and it takes him a moment to recognize the feeling as bitterness. Limited though Jester’s duplicates might be, their magic is still tied to hers. A renewable resource. And he – well. Behold Caleb’s simulacrum, less useful than an illusion and almost as fragile. One degree better than a shade created by Resonant Echo, but only just.

He forces the thought down, embarrassed by his own self-pity. Quietly, he pulls a copper wire from his component pouch and whispers into it, “I am nearly finished here, but thank you.”

Across the way, Jester’s face brightens as she receives his message. There is the faintest delay between her mouth beginning to move and her voice filling Caleb’s mind.

“Oh my gosh! I completely forgot the short-range stuff was still working. Now I feel dumb for wasting a duplicate on that. Hey, is there a word limit on this thing, or is it really just a free for all? Because I – ”

Her voice falls away in his mind, the magic unraveling, but across the way Jester is still talking, unaware that the spell is over. A small bloom of fondness fills the cavity of his misery. He can pinpoint the moment when she realizes, her face falling into a familiar pout.

Jester’s duplicate takes over, saying, “Hey!” He glances up and finds it staring down at him, expectant. “Can you send me another message? I have more to say.”

The tiny sunspot in his chest glows a little brighter. Limited though he might be in his arcane reserves, he has no shortage of cantrips. He can still make his friend smile.

“Of course. A moment.” He fumbles with the wire again, shifting to point in Jester’s direction. “Yes?”

“Oh good, you’re back! I was just gonna say, Veth says you need to eat more and you really would be welcome over here, and also I think Beau is coming to talk to you, but I promise she won’t – ”

The spell fizzles just before a voice behind him says, “Sup.”

He startles even with the warning, having inherited Caleb’s paranoia in addition to everything else. Turning with a frown, he asks, “Did you two plan that?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I said no,” Beauregard replies easily, dropping onto his blanket with her usual loose-limbed grace. She takes one of his baby carrots and snaps it between her teeth. “I wanted to talk to you.” With a glance at Jester’s duplicate hovering over them, she adds, “Alone.”

They both look at Jester, who is unabashedly staring from her blanket: the duplicate winks out of existence and Jester flashes them two thumbs up, yelling across the Grove, “Have a good talk!”

“There’s no privacy in this fucking group,” Beauregard grumbles, which is rich considering the close quarters they all used to share. She crunches on her carrot for a while, apparently thinking, before finally swallowing and saying, “I’ve been told I owe you an apology.”

He can’t stop his eyebrows from raising slightly. “What an inspiring start.”

“Shut up,” she advises, flexing her hand. Her knuckles are freshly skinned, so perhaps Veth was wrong about her activities with Yasha earlier. Without looking at him, she continues, “You know how bad the last few weeks have been, so I’m not going to, like, make excuses for myself, but – ” Here, Beauregard sucks in a deep breath before blowing it out. “I admit I shouldn’t have punched you in front of Luc. That wasn’t a good example to set for the kid.”

He blinks at her, waiting for more, but she’s gone quiet. “You think I am upset because you punched me?”

“I don’t fucking know,” she snaps, turning to glare at him. “I’d be pretty pissed if someone took a swing at me when I couldn’t even heal.”

“You didn’t know that when you hit me,” he reminds her. When she makes a noise like she’s about to protest, he continues, “You didn’t. I did not tell you and neither did Caleb.”

Beauregard’s legs draw up as she rests her chin on her knees. Gaze flickering away again, she mumbles, “It’s not like we really had time. It’s not like he thought he had to tell me how to play nice.”

“It was an oversight,” he says, confident in that if little else. Nothing relaxes in Beauregard’s posture, though, so he takes a deep breath and says, “I am not upset about the punch. It is pretty low on the list, actually.”

She sniffs a little pitifully, still not looking, and gods above, he doesn’t want to have this conversation. But then she asks, voice rough, “What’s on the top of that list, then?” and he can’t not answer her. Telling her that nothing is wrong will only make her angry – angrier – and they will be back to where they started. Worse, perhaps.

Dragging a hand over his face, he says, “I am not asking to be punched again, but that was the most normal I have been treated since we set foot in Blumenthal.” He picks a point just over her head and stares at it like his life depends on it. “Do you think I am unaware of how difficult this is? You are grieving. You are all grieving. Caleb does not have to watch that. I do.” He sucks in a breath. “I know what I am, I know who I am not, but although you will be unhappy to hear it, I care about you. All of you. It hurts me to watch you grieve and it is worse knowing you do so for – ” He stops himself just short of saying me. Beauregard is clever. She probably heard it anyway. He forces himself to swallow and continues, more evenly, “I am sorry my presence here is painful, but please understand that it is unpleasant for both of us. You are reminded of him, and I am being – ostracized – ” Beauregard makes a small noise and he rushes to add, “Understandably so. You do not need to explain to me why, but it is – still very difficult. So.”

His entire chest feels like there are metal bands tightening around it, his breaths coming out shallow and uneven. Gods, this is horrible. It would be a mercy, now, if she beat him back into snow.

She doesn’t. Instead, voice still rough, she says, “Hey.” When he doesn’t respond right away, she prompts, “C-2,” which is… certainly new. He glances at her, though, and tactfully doesn’t mention the tear tracks that are streaking her makeup. “Can I hug you?”

He’s not sure how to feel about that, but Caleb does. Stiffly, he nods.

It’s a pretty bad hug, objectively, both of them still sitting on the picnic blanket, but it also might be the best thing that’s happened to him since he popped into existence and Caleb handed him some components and a ward to look after. Beauregard’s wiry arms are tight around him, just on the edge of bruising, and she doesn’t let go until a shaky breath finally rattles free from his lungs. As they part, she punches him with extreme gentleness, just in the shoulder, and that feels like affection, too.

“I’m sorry,” Beauregard says, “for all of that. I – I think I’m really mad at him, for leaving me here with all of this, but you can’t exactly be mad at a corpse, you know? And you’re just here, and you look like him and sound like him and I – ”

“Beauregard.” Her mouth snaps shut. He makes an effort to meet her eyes as he says, “For what it is worth, I am sorry he’s not here with you. And it is probably not my place to say, but I think Caleb would share the sentiment.” With a wry smile, he taps the side of his head. “I have all of his thoughts, after all. Up until we split.”

She smears away a few new tears, ruining her makeup even more in the process. Sniffing, she says, “Yeah, well. He said some shit right before he went into that house that – that doesn’t sit too well with me – ”

“Did he tell you that he was satisfied with the life he had lived, should he fall in battle?” She stares at him with such shock that he cannot help but laugh. “Beauregard. He’s told you something similar before every dangerous battle you have ever entered.”

“Fuck off, I know,” she snaps before wilting slightly. “But this time he – that bastard didn’t come back.”

Ah. There it is. Caleb would put a hand on her shoulder, now, but he isn’t sure they’re there yet. Instead, he leans in slightly and says, with all the gentleness he can muster, “You would know if he wasn’t returning because he chose not to. Whatever is broken with the gods right now – that is why he hasn’t come back. No other reason.”

Beauregard sounds horribly congested when she asks, “You sure?”

“Quite,” he replies firmly. “Do you know why he tells you that, every time?”

“Because he’s a dramatic old man with a complex?”

He has enough distance to be able to laugh at that. “Maybe. But consider, if you were ever unable to bring him back, that he would want to ease your guilt.” She opens her mouth to interrupt, but he continues, “I am not saying it is a lie. He is genuinely quite satisfied with his accomplishments. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want more time with all of you.”

Even with a streaming nose and tear-swollen eyes, Beauregard’s eyes are keen as she takes him in. After a moment, she says, “Yeah?”

He smiles at her. “Ja.”

She punches him in the shoulder again, a little harder than last time but still far too gently to hurt. With a watery grin, she says, “When Caleb wakes up, I’m gonna tell him that you spilled all his secrets.”

That will be sooner rather than later, if tonight goes well. “Please do.”

Beauregard wipes her nose and stands, shaking out her arms. “Alright. Come on.”

“Where are we going?” he asks, already getting up.

“We’re going to go sit with the others. Veth is right, it’s fucking depressing watching you over here eating rabbit food by yourself.”

“I was actually – ”

Beauregard slings an arm across his shoulders the moment he’s standing. “C-2. My guy. That was not a request.”

When he sighs instead of protesting, she starts dragging him forward with her own momentum. The rest of the Nein have gathered on Jester’s blanket, unabashedly staring and probably doing their best to eavesdrop the entire time, and when they reach the edge of the quilt, Beauregard shoves him forward. Jester is there to grab onto his arm and pull him down, sandwiching him between herself and Veth, and Fjord makes eye contact and nods, and even Yasha smiles at him, tentative though it might be, before tugging her wife down for a kiss on the cheek. Caduceus pushes one of the trays of food closer and it feels – it feels –

It feels a lot like Caleb remembers.

§

After dinner, Caleb stands in the Clay kitchen and assembles a small plate of leftovers from the meal. Bits of crisp cut vegetables, a small dollop of hummus, some seed-crusted slices of bread doused in honey. It is unlikely that Essek will eat any of it, but he has to try.

Clarabelle wanders in as he’s finishing up, one cat in her arms and another scarfed around her shoulders, the fluffy traitors. He tries very hard not to be jealous and almost succeeds.

“Could I trouble you to bring this plate to our friend down the hall?” he asks, wiping his hands on a towel and nodding to the plate in question. “I can, ah, take the cats, if you’d like.”

“Sure,” she says with a shrug that nearly unseats Mitzi. Thankfully, the little monsters are sleepy and pliable enough that they take their relocation in stride. Rudi purrs happily in his arms, perhaps too comfortable to care that his smell is wrong.

When Clarabelle picks up the plate, he adds, “Could you also, ah – maybe not mention, that the food is from me. Please.” She stares at him long enough that he feels compelled to add, “He may be less inclined to eat it, if he… well.”

“Sure,” Clarabelle says slowly. “Whatever you say.” She turns to leave and almost makes it out of the kitchen before glancing back. With a little too much curiosity in her voice, she asks, “Do you think the cats would try to eat Caleb’s body?”

That is not the question he was expecting. He looks down at Rudi in his arms. “I don’t think so? They are very well-fed. And lazy.”

“Oh.” She seems to take this in stride, if with a little disappointment. “Okay.”

And then she disappears down the hall.

Jester insists on a living room sleepover that night, attendance not optional, and it almost definitely is his fault for hesitating when she asked him where he was sleeping. Beauregard grumbles the most, but she’s also the first one to start throwing down pillows while Jester demands a series of arcane lights that glow various colors. Fjord and Caduceus appear with blankets after Yasha moves the furniture out of the way, and eventually even Veth chips in by critiquing how everyone else is completing their tasks.

Essek, of course, does not join them. Caleb’s hopes of a private attempt at resurrection grow even slimmer. Regardless, he sneaks away under the pretense of a trip to the privy to cast an alarm by the back door: when one of the cats inevitably trips it just before dawn, he will have his window of opportunity. There is a chance that breakfast could be a reunion.

The sleepover feels a little stilted in the beginning, but then Jester summons a hoard of faintly glowing spiritual hamster-unicorns that bob around the space, and Beauregard starts offering night caps from a flask she smuggled into the Grove, and Veth curls up behind him, back to back, in a vague echo of how she used to curl up with Caleb long ago. One of the cats – Marta, by the feel of the fur – doesn’t want to be left out, and snuggles up to his chest, and the others follow soon after. The hamster-unicorns wink out, one by one, as Jester falls asleep, until only the amber glow of his globules remains. Those, too, begin to dim as he gets too tired to recast.

He’s half asleep himself when he thinks he sees a figure in the doorway, too small to be any of the Clays. Mind clouded and heavy, the words come to bed, dear almost slip off his tongue, but he catches them just in time. The figure disappears a moment later, as silently as he’d arrived, and by the time Caleb settles again, sleep pulling him under at last, it is easier to believe that it was wishful thinking after all.

The rare peace of a dreamless sleep ends abruptly with the sound of raised voices.

He shoots up, hands already preparing to cast, and finds a shouting match in progress. Everyone is still in their nightclothes, but several are on their feet while the rest are quickly rousing. Beside him, Yasha blinks in sleepy confusion, and Veth pops up from underneath a mound of blankets looking irritated. Caduceus, half-awake, pats around for his staff before tapping the crystal atop it. Light fills the room, illuminating Beauregard and Fjord facing off with Jester and – Essek?

“I cannot fucking believe this,” Beauregard snaps at them. In a strange contrast to her oversized sleep shirt and loose hair, she’s wearing her goggles. She rips them off as Caduceus’ light takes over. The goggles dangle in her grip as she stabs a finger toward Essek’s chest. Essek, who is still dressed in his daywear. “I should have known you’d pull some bullshit like this, I should have fucking known. You never learn. This is why we almost didn’t fucking tell you about any of this.”

“Beau, that’s enough,” Fjord says, but his face is uncharacteristically stern as he stares at Jester. Her expression is stony as she stares at the floor, arms crossed. Beside her, Essek meets Beauregard’s eyes with a cold disregard. Fjord looks between Essek and Jester before asking, “What were you two thinking?”

“Excuse me,” Veth interjects loudly. One of her braids has come loose in sleep, and it leaves her looking strangely off-balance. “Can anyone tell us what the fuck is going and why this cat fight can’t wait until a reasonable hour?”

“And whatever it is, can we do it quieter?” Caduceus asks, not unreasonably.

Caleb can’t hear any of the other Clays rising just yet, but his attention is admittedly split: there is something in Essek’s expression, just out of reach, that is nagging him. Too many years in court, he can’t help but think a second time in as many days. Not for the first time, he wishes they had arrived in Rosohna sooner by a hundred years.

Beauregard angles herself towards the rest of the group and hisses angrily, “Hot boy just convinced Jester to waste our last fucking diamond.” Then, over her shoulder to him, snidely, “Great going, dipshit.”

Jester bristles in Essek’s defense, eyes snapping up. “He didn’t convince me, Beau. We had an idea. Other people besides you are allowed to have those, you know?”

Beauregard recoils slightly as if slapped, and Caleb finds himself wincing in sympathy. Yasha finally stands, offering him a hand up and lifting him to his feet before going over to her wife. She drags Beauregard a safe distance from Essek, putting herself in between them, and looks over everyone involved with an unimpressed scowl. Her expression reminds Caleb of a lifetime ago, when Yasha was a dark-haired bouncer at the circus tent’s entrance.

“Why don’t we all calm down for a second,” she says, low and quiet. It is not a suggestion. Jester looks away, slightly chastised. Essek does not. Yasha seems to consider her options for a moment before saying, “Fjord?”

Fjord heaves out a sigh. He rakes a hand through his loose hair, pushing it out of his face, and says, “Beau heard something and woke me up when she stepped on my stomach trying to get up and investigate.” Beauregard makes a tiny sound of protest in her throat which gets promptly ignored. “We, ah – followed the sounds down the hall and found Jester and Essek casting – ” He frowns slightly. “Something.” Glancing at Jester, he asks with more of his usual gentleness, “Another Revivify?”

Jester sniffs faintly and looks up at the ceiling, quickly wiping something from her cheek. Caduceus, still seated among the blankets, hums thoughtfully before saying, “No, it must have been an attempt at Raise Dead. He’s been gone too long for anything else.” He pauses. “Well. Anything we can afford. I think I’d have noticed a pile of diamonds the size of my house if you’d tried the other thing.”

“We tried that already though,” Veth says. Caleb's not sure when she’d moved to stand beside him, too quick and quiet, but she crosses her arms and leans a shoulder against his thigh as she says, “That’s what Caleb’s stone does. Or was supposed to do.”

Essek is the one to answer, his gaze still fixed distrustfully on Beauregard. “The magic stored in Caleb’s stone casts a similar spell, but is arcane in its nature. From what Jester told me, a spell at that level with divine magic had not been attempted.” Clever, clever Essek. They’re both picking at the same technicality: the delicate distinctions between the arcane and the divine. He finds his brow furrowing, however – surely Jester had mentioned her findings from this afternoon to him? Artagan had all but confirmed that divinity is bound to the whims of the red moon’s plight. He opens his mouth to say as much when Essek adds stiffly, “Moreover, there are certain abilities I possess that allow me to influence particular events.” Caleb feels his heart sink. Essek is quieter when he says, “If there was any chance, any at all, that a resurrection by a cleric’s hand could succeed, I would know. Perhaps I even could have ensured it.” A pointed pause before he adds, “It is something I have considered since the events of – of Cognouza.”

In the tense silence that follows, Caleb wishes he was braver, that he could wade between the factions of his friends and gather Essek in his arms. He wishes Essek would permit such a thing. He wishes Caleb – the real one, the one they want – was here in his place.

Caleb is familiar with the ability Essek is talking about; how many late nights had they stayed up discussing their experiences with spellcaster rebound as Caleb fiddled with his iteration of Wish? How many bottles of wine had they emptied while philosophizing about the strands of fate and choice that braided to form the reality around them, and how to alter such things? Caleb had made his peace with never mastering chronurgy to the point of accessing such a skill, but that hadn’t stopped him from pressing Essek for every detail, even if his friend’s experience had, at the time, only been with the theory of it, discounting several attempts in the controlled environment of his laboratory.

Here, in the Clays’ living room, he finally pinpoints the discrepancy in Essek’s expression: he had looked tired at lunch, but now there are visible bruises beneath his eyes. Essek’s usual levitation is an inch or two less, leaving him barely taller than Jester. Where his hands are folded primly before him, there is the faintest, nearly imperceptible tremor. Essek has reached out to wrench the strands of fate to his whim and found no such future worth grasping, just as Artagan said, but still suffered the rebound. He wonders if Essek’s heresy has blinded him once again, so sure that Jester’s friend did not have the full truth that he sought to confirm it for himself.

“But Beau said you wasted the diamond,” Veth says, finally breaking the silence. “So it really wasn’t all that different from Molly, is what you’re saying.”

“I think we’re losing focus here,” Fjord says just as Beauregard snaps, a little too sharply, “Leave Molly out of this.”

Jester curls further into herself. Essek’s expression grows colder as his eyes flick to Fjord’s. Voice clipped, he says, “We had a hypothesis. We took a risk to test it. It failed. You are upset about a diamond? I will find you more. At least we attempted something today. What have the rest of you done?”

“Not really about the diamond,” Caduceus murmurs quietly.

“It’s a little about the diamond,” Veth says.

“What we did today was work together, as a team, because that’s what we do,” Beauregard says with a sneer, ignoring the others. “You think I don’t feel useless? At least I’m not sneaking away to make decisions on my own because I think I’m so much smarter than everyone else. That’s not how we work. I thought you’d been with us long enough to understand that, but maybe you are as dumb as you – ”

Caleb finds himself speaking before consciously deciding to do so. “Beauregard.”

That only earns him two furious looks: one from her and the other from Essek. Perhaps Veth feels him flinch slightly, because she bristles in Essek’s direction, saying, “Hey. He’s standing up for you, which is more than any of us are willing to do!”

“Veth! Stop yelling at Essek!”

“Jester – ”

“Why? Because you ditched the world’s best detective agency to listen to – ”

“Alright,” Caduceus says, voice almost lost under the noise, “I think that’s enough of that.”

A quiet hum shivers across Caleb’s bones, the faintest scent of compost tickling the back of his nose as Caduceus’ familiar divinity washes over the room. Around him, Beauregard visibly loosens, as does Jester. Yasha blinks. The muscle in Essek’s jaw stops flexing. Fjord just glances over at Caduceus, apparently unaffected, but the tension bleeds out of Veth’s frame where she’s pressed up to his side.

“Oh, fuck off with this shit,” Beauregard grumbles, but there isn’t any heat behind it. The effect of the spell, perhaps. He finds it difficult to tell, but then again, he wasn’t as agitated as the others to begin with. The desire to kill Beauregard has lessened slightly, but Caleb has come to understand that urge as a standard one.

“Now then,” Caduceus says, presumably making the most of his time before chaos descends on the room once more. “Let’s take a step back. Essek and Jester have made their choice, and they can’t take it back now.” He looks specifically at Essek. “Forgive me,” he says, not sounding particularly apologetic, “but your kind of magic isn’t my speciality. Are you saying that a resurrection through our usual avenues won’t work?” Essek hesitates for a moment before nodding. “Alright then. That’s good information.” Beauregard, even in her calmed state, seems to puff up indignantly, but Caduceus isn’t finished. In the same calm, factual tone, he says, “It’s unfortunate that you felt the need to confirm that behind everyone’s backs. I’d hoped that if we’d taught you anything over the years, Essek, it was that a little trust can go a long way.”

Essek doesn’t visibly flinch, but Caleb knows him better than the others – has studied that face across its full spectrum of expressions with the attentiveness that made him a mage. He doesn’t miss the faintest crease by Essek’s eyes, even as his stony frown does not waver; Essek Thelyss has always worn shame more discreetly than anger.

Jester opens her mouth as if to protest, but Caduceus says, “That applies to you, too. I’m sure your intentions were good, both of you. But Beau’s right. This isn’t how we fix this.”

As Jester wilts, Fjord reaches out to touch her shoulder. No one says anything when Jester shrugs him off, but the tension in the room grows palpably thicker, even under the weight of Caduceus’ magic. Wordlessly, Fjord lets his hand drop.

“Now,” Caduceus continues placidly, “I’d prefer no more shouting when this wears off. Other people in this house are trying to sleep. There are some apologies to be made in the morning, but for now, I think we can agree that we can’t have any more of this.” Caduceus isn’t looking at Caleb at all, but suddenly he wonders if someone spotted his casting of Alarm earlier. Dinner churns unhappily in his stomach. “If someone has an idea, they bring it to the group. If someone has a grievance, they bring that, too. I know we’re all tired and scared. I know there’s a lot of pressure and not a lot of resources. But the one thing we need to be able to rely on is each other, and sneaking around isn’t going to help that. Fair?”

He feels the quiet sigh of Caduceus’ magic loosening, but in the wake of its retreat, preemptive guilt rises in his throat like bile. It doesn’t help that the others are nodding, even Jester, even – though only once and very stiffly – Essek. Caduceus’ eyes haven’t strayed to Caleb once, but he can’t shake the idea that every word is actually meant for him, as if his private plans have been discovered.

“Alright. Let’s get some sleep. I’m always amazed at how much more manageable things feel in the morning.”

The tension doesn’t dissipate, but it does ease. Yasha plucks Beauregard’s goggles from her hands and tugs her back to their pile of blankets, albeit further from the others this time. Essek murmurs something to Jester, too soft to catch, before disappearing down the darkened hallway. Fjord starts to ask a question, but Jester walks away, wiping her face as she slips into the kitchen. No one moves for a moment before Caduceus heaves a sigh, pulling himself to standing and following after her. Fjord, looking uncharacteristically small, kicks at the bedding by his feet before settling down into it.

There’s a small tug on Caleb’s sleep pants and he looks down to see Veth watching him carefully. “You okay?”

He thinks of his plan, his alarm, his one unlikely shot. He pictures it failing, pictures standing before the group just as Jester and Essek had tonight, being torn apart for going behind their backs once again. Perhaps it would be even worse, given that he has such little goodwill accumulated with the group. If they can be furious at Jester, there is no hope for him.

Realizing he’s been quiet too long, he clears his throat and says, “Ja. Always.”

Veth’s eyes narrow, but she doesn’t press. Just says, “We’ll find another diamond. Don’t worry.”

A diamond is the least of his concerns. Still, he forces a small smile. “I know.”

They return to the blankets, but the atmosphere from earlier is gone. Even when Jester and Caduceus return after a time, everyone remains as spread out as the room will allow. Jester curls up near Caduceus, leaving Fjord alone, and even Veth’s presence against his back is no longer as comforting as it was. The fragile camaraderie of the day has cracked horribly, and the thought of being the one to shatter it completely makes his entire chest ache. When one of the cats trips his alarm, he doesn’t move – not to the room where Caleb’s body rests, nor to the door to recast it. He just lays there, heart torn into ribbons, until the weight of sleep pulls him under.

§

Breakfast is – tense, to put it lightly.

No one speaks as they push congee around in their bowls. Jester’s face is purple and swollen from crying, and she takes a seat next to Caduceus instead of Fjord. Beauregard is trying to keep Fjord’s spirits up in the meantime, but she’s never been one for subtlety and Fjord obviously doesn’t have the patience for it today, which sours her mood in turn. Veth is the only one trying to keep their faltering momentum going, asking about everyone’s plans for the day, but when Caleb alone offers her lukewarm support for her handful of suggestions, she falls silent as well.

Yasha is the only one who meets Caleb’s eye, and the pained crease of her expression tells him all he needs to know.

It feels almost laughable that only last night he had dared to imagine Caleb at the table with them, shoulder to shoulder with Essek, buttering toast for his friend while nodding along to the others’ animated accounts of the last few days. That feels like a fractured reality to this one, where everyone chokes down their food, grave and silent. He gauges the exact distance between Jester and Fjord, Fjord and Beauregard. Factors in Veth’s averted eyes, Essek’s absence. It does not take a particularly clever man to know that this group is one incident away from fracturing entirely, a diamond gone to dust.

He stirs his congee and imagines being caught sneaking in to cast his spell, the fury of his friends chewing through the tenuous ties of their budding trust like flame on dry rope. He stirs his bowl some more and imagines making it inside the room unnoticed, only to cast and fail and be forced to admit that his most powerful magic is no longer available to them in whatever must come next. Forced to admit that he, too, has operated without telling anyone else, save Essek, unmovable from Caleb’s side, but – he cannot imagine the group taking Essek’s second transgression lightly. It is not hard to fathom a second fight, worse than last night’s, and Essek being driven away as a result. Also unacceptable. He gathers a spoonful of congee and forces it into his mouth. The only scenario that does not end in disaster is if he manages to bring Caleb back. Only then might they forgive him for his lie.

Perhaps Essek told himself, told Jester, the same thing last night. The congee in his mouth suddenly tastes like bile. He makes himself swallow before something worse happens, knuckles white where he clutches his spoon. Good intentions only go so far. The sting of Essek’s reaction to the news of Caleb’s death the other night is a sharp reminder.

Caduceus is the only person to clean his bowl, setting his spoon aside and saying, “Well. We’ve got a new day ahead of us. How about that.”

What they have is a corpse in the guest room, but that feels unkind to point out. From Beauregard’s expression, she’s thinking something similar. Still, no one voices any of their thoughts out loud.

“Anything we need to get out of the way?” Caduceus asks with what has to be some degree of false pleasantry.

Jester mumbles something too indistinct to be heard. When Caduceus prompts her, she says again, louder this time, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you guys about our plan.” Her voice goes unsteady when she says, more softly, “I was just trying to be the cleric, you know?”

Fjord beats anyone else to replying. “And I’m sorry I lashed out. I was tired and confused, but that doesn’t excuse that I reacted badly. Can you forgive me?”

The small, watery smile Jester gives him seems to remove a decade from Fjord’s face. Turning to Beauregard, Fjord adds, “I’m sorry for being short with you. I – was angry you dragged me into it, I suppose.”

“Apology mostly accepted,” Beauregard deadpans, appearing far less moved than Jester. When the silence drags on, expectant, she rolls her eyes and says, “And sorry I stepped on you. I guess.”

“Fjord is very delicate,” Veth says primly, earning her a well-deserved middle finger.

Beauregard glances down the table in his direction and says, mostly sincere, “Sorry for calling your boyfriend dumb, C-2. He’s just really pissing me off.”

He doesn’t feel qualified to accept that apology on Essek’s behalf, or to claim to be Essek’s partner, but he awkwardly nods.

The well of apologies runs dry, at least for now, and slowly the group begins to limp forward with plans for the day. Tentatively at first, they dole out responsibilities until the tension melts enough to return to some semblance of normalcy. It’s vaguely unsettling with no one bickering or shouting, but it will do for now. They decide that he should look over the remaining half of Caleb’s spellbook today, just as Veth will review the remainder of hers, and the rest will start looking into their moon problem in addition to procuring more diamonds. There’s some idle chatter about possibly consulting Yussa, but doing so would require a wizard able and willing to get them there.

“Good luck prying Essek out of this house,” Beauregard says while she snacks on a handful of bugs that Yasha has produced from her pocket. With a glance across the table, she adds, “And we probably shouldn’t burn too many of your spells, C-2.”

He considers that as he idly stirs his congee for something to do with his hands. “I could send you by circle, perhaps. Assuming nothing has gone terribly wrong at Tidepeak Tower.”

“That feels optimistic,” Fjord says bluntly.

“Are you sure none of your spells have come back?” Jester asks with just enough hope in her voice to sting.

He forces an apologetic smile and says, “I’m afraid not.” When Jester’s expression drops, he adds, “I could still teleport you if necessary, though. Spells are meant to be used.”

“Wait, what does happen when you run out of magic?” Fjord asks as if it’s just occurred to him. Likely, it only just now has. “Do you just sort of – ” He mimes a small explosion. When he glances around at the expressions of the Nein – ranging from a tight-lipped shake of the head to a mouth dropping open in horror – he adds, “Sorry, was that – ? Sorry.”

Caleb runs a hand through his hair and tries very hard not to sigh. “It’s fine. Nothing happens. I simply become far less useful to you all.”

“Don’t say that, Caleb Two,” Jester says, throwing herself across Caduceus to hang off Caleb’s arm. “You’re still very smart and fun, and we obviously still want you here, whether you have magic or not.”

“We carted Fjord’s useless ass around, didn’t we?” Veth pipes up. “Same rules apply here.”

He tries to laugh, but it comes out pained. “I am, ah, a little more fragile than Fjord, I’m afraid.”

“Hey, if you don’t get beat to shit, do you age?” Beauregard asks with her usual tact. “Or are you functionally immortal as long as we baby-proof the house?”

“It – I – ”

“Are you afraid to die?” Yasha asks softly, her face full of gentle concern.

“That is – ”

A throat clears pointedly in the doorway.

The table falls silent except for Jester, who manages a weak, “Oh! Essek.”

“You missed the apology circle,” Beauregard says through a mouthful of bug.

Essek’s eyes flick in her direction but don’t linger there for long. He looks just as tired as he had last night, the bruises beneath his eyes a darker shade of purple. Ignoring Beauregard, he says with brittle politeness, “I came to see if you all required any particular skill sets today. I will be preparing my spells shortly.”

It is a clumsy attempt at an apology, all things considered, but Caleb can’t help but ache on Essek’s behalf. These past few days have felt like a horrible backslide, the Essek that Caleb knows slipping further from reach. You do need to be useful to us, he wants to tell him. Just be here. They are no longer the same group of chuckleheads who need a teleport, and Essek is no longer the Shadowhand indulging them. He had thought – Caleb had thought – that they were a family now, having moved beyond the transactional nature of their past.

The silence around the table seems to suggest a similar feeling of unease among the others to varying degrees. Beauregard frowns at Essek like she’s trying to solve a problem. Veth becomes very interested in her congee. The longer no one speaks, the tenser Essek becomes.

It’s Fjord who breaks the silence at last. Tentative, he says, “I suppose… Teleport?”

Essek relaxes minutely and nods. “Anything else?”

The others glance at each other, unsure. Regretting it already, Caleb opens his mouth and suggests quietly, “An extra person who can scry might be helpful.”

Essek goes stiff at the sound of his voice, but Jester nods immediately. “Yeah! That’s a great idea.” Turning the full force of her charm on Essek, she adds, “Plus something to crunch people if we end up needing to fight something?”

“Very well.” Essek lingers for a moment, looking as if he’s considering saying something else, but eventually his mouth closes and he turns to leave. Jester’s expression sinks.

“Do you want any congee?” she asks a little desperately. “Or Yasha has some bugs?” And then, quieter still: “You don’t even have to eat if you aren’t hungry. You can just hang out, Essek.”

Essek doesn’t even turn around. He only pauses – even then only because it’s Jester – and says, “No, thank you,” before disappearing back to his room.

The group watches him go. When they hear the faint sound of a door latching, Beauregard says, “I’m not counting that as a real apology. Just for the record.”

They finish breakfast in a new stretch of strained silence, but Caleb takes heart in the fact that Yasha asks for his help in the garden before he starts his research for the day. She guides him to a small flower bed out back and gestures for him to kneel beside her in the dirt.

Handing him a pair of gloves, she says, “Caduceus gave me some weeding to do while Beau was gone on her mission. The quiet was nice, but it felt good to accomplish something, too.” While he tugs on his gloves, she puts on her own and adds, “I know Caleb likes his routines. He – you probably already know this, but he told me once that preparing his spells every morning was good for him. Calming. Since you can’t do that, I thought – well.” Her voice goes even smaller as she says, “If you hate it we can go inside.”

He swallows around something heavy in his throat. “No, this – this sounds lovely. Thank you, Yasha.”

She nods and together, in companionable silence, they get to work. It’s a fairly small flower bed in the scope of the Blooming Grove, but it manages to contain several different species of plants and twice as many types of weeds. They come out of the dirt easily enough, but it still takes enough strength and focus that his mind can drift to a simpler place: there are weeds and he has hands. It is as straightforward as that. The better part of an hour passes that way.

“Better?” Yasha asks when they’ve finished, sitting back onto the grass and pulling out a waterskin.

He accepts a drink before saying, “I think so.” His arms feel tired, but in a good way. For the first time since he opened Caleb’s spellbook, his headache is gone. “Thank you for suggesting this.”

Yasha shrugs. “I know everything’s been weird. I know we’ve been weird. I’m sorry. I’m not sure how not to be.” She caps the waterskin, obviously struggling with how to phrase something, then says, “I do want to say sorry about breakfast. It was a lot. A lot of hard questions all at once. I shouldn’t have asked you – ”

“The Nein are always a lot,” he tells her gently. When her eyes glance up to meet his, he offers her a smile. “It is part of our charm.” If she thinks anything of him including himself in their number, she doesn’t mention it. “And you know, the questions aren’t the hard part. Mostly I’m just trying not to make people upset with my answers.”

Yasha frowns. “They’re not allowed to be offended if they asked the question in the first place.”

“I wish that was how it worked,” he says with a sigh. Absently, he rubs his fingers together, savoring the grit of dirt between them. It feels nice. It feels real. He takes a steadying breath and says, “If you want to ask your question again, I will answer it.” Forcing another smile, this one decidedly worse than the last, he adds, “You are even allowed to be upset afterwards. I will not judge you.”

She watches him for a moment, considering, before eventually she says, “Okay.”

His back straightens on some old instinct of Caleb’s, a posture well-suited for lecturing from the front of a classroom. “You asked if I am afraid to die. It is a bit complicated. My fears are Caleb’s fears, so in that sense, to the extent he feared death, so do I.” Yasha nods. “But the key difference, I think, between Caleb and myself, is that as a simulacrum, I do not fear the end of my existence. That is by design.”

Yasha’s brow furrows. “I’m… not sure I understand.”

“Fear of death is oftentimes the fear that your life will not continue on as it has.” He takes a deep breath. “I do not have that fear. My life will continue because Caleb’s will, once he returns. You see, to me, there is very little difference between his life and my own. I have every thought he has ever had, every idea, every regret.” It feels almost cathartic to say, after biting his tongue these past few days. “In my mind, there is no difference between us. I am Caleb. This is simply a – a different vessel for my mind. When the vessel disappears, Caleb will still exist – I will still exist – assuming we can find a way to raise him.”

He stops there. Yasha doesn’t seem furious with him, which is a credit to her willingness to hear him out. She does watch him very carefully for a time, though, brow pinched as if trying to find something in his expression.

At last, she asks, “But Caleb – when you disappear, he won’t… he won’t know what you know, right? He won’t remember this, that we talked?”

“No. Not unless I tell him, but even then, it would only be a secondhand account.”

“So – ” Yasha’s mouth twists unhappily, and he knows she is trying to sort out something complicated. She glances up at him and says, “I’m not trying to make you sad or anything, but isn’t there still a loss? The memories and experiences only you had?” Her voice is exceptionally gentle when she says, “Those things make you you.”

Her concern is oddly touching, if misplaced. With a small smile, he says, “It will only be the memories of a handful of days. It is not like the Pumats, who have lived years separate from one another. Not to mention that I cannot really learn anything new, so there is no risk of loss there. And truly?” The laugh that escapes him is devoid of humor. “I can say with confidence that Caleb will not want to remember what I’ve seen.”

Yasha’s expression crumples slightly. “I know we haven’t been – the kindest – ”

“Not that,” he says quickly, attempting to head off her guilt. “It is not because of any way I have been treated.” He considers an analogous case and asks, “Would you have wanted to see what we went through when Obann took you? How furious and hurt and downtrodden we were?”

Her posture immediately goes stiff, like the scar on the back of her neck has twinged. He knows the feeling; Caleb’s arms still ache when it rains.

“No,” Yasha says quietly. “I guess I wouldn’t.”

He nods. “There we go, then. I hope I have answered your question.” Straining to add some levity, he says, “If you are upset, I understand, but I may ask you to refrain from punching me.”

She doesn’t swing at him, or laugh at his frail joke. Yasha just stares, until suddenly he finds himself wrapped up in a hug. It is very different from Beauregard’s, gentler and more all-encompassing, but it’s grounding in a familiar way.

Softly, in his ear, Yasha says, “Thank you for telling me. I am very glad you’re here.”

For the first time since Caleb died, he almost believes the sentiment.

§

Beauregard is waiting for them inside, perched on a dining room chair and absently popping her wrists. She looks up when Yasha enters behind him and says, “Hey, babe. You ready to head out?”

The two of them slip away to do reconnaissance on the status of the red moon, leaving Caleb to his work. Veth is busy discussing something with Constance in the other room, meaning that it’s up to him to fetch Caleb’s spellbook from Essek. A knock on the door earns him a response from an Unseen Servant this time, which feels like a regression from the day before. Essek is the one to hand over the spellbook in the end, but he does so without engaging. Perhaps he is still sour about last night.

The second half of Caleb’s spellbook is neater, which is helpful, but also denser, which is not. His headache returns in full force by the time he reaches the final entries. Thankfully, Caleb only knows two spells at the ninth level, and he has considered the only viable option extensively. The entry for Wish seems to taunt him as he flips through it.

He does not mention it to Veth as he carefully shuts the book. When she looks up from the final pages of her own spellbook a short while later, mouth twisting unhappily, he tells her, “We knew it was a long shot.”

When he returns the spellbook, Essek accepts it without comment, although his thumb sweeps proprietarily over the cover without seeming to realize. There is something a little vacant about Essek today – perhaps his exhaustion is finally catching up with him. The desire to reach out a hand and smooth a thumb over the bags beneath Essek’s eyes is nearly overwhelming, but – no. Best not. Caleb wonders if the man has tranced at all since they arrived, but decides – as the door slams shut in his face – that he probably isn’t in a position to ask.

He resolves to send some calming tea along with the food the next time he puts together a tray for Essek.

Lunch goes better than breakfast in the sense that the lack of progress on everyone’s fronts becomes a source of commiseration. The clerics’ latest round of divinations has produced little information about how best to begin solving their moon problem, and the spellbooks are obviously a dead end. Fjord has made his way through the contents of the communal bag of holding in search of books or forgotten magical items that could help, but it mostly ended up being janitorial work. The last of the morning’s ice breaks considerably when Fjord, obviously at the end of his patience, holds up three strobing celebones and asks, completely deadpan, if they might help resurrect Caleb from beyond the clutches of the gods.

Through laughter and tears, Caleb begins to wonder if they might eventually be alright.

He sends Clarabelle with another plate of food for Essek, just small bites of his more favored dishes, and includes a small cup of tea from a blend labeled for better rest. Jester has thrown the full force of her enthusiasm toward tonight’s soup and has high hopes about luring Essek out to dine with them, but Caleb would rather not wait until then for his friend to eat.

After lunch, the group tries to outline exactly what they need from Yussa. Privately, Caleb isn’t sure there is much Yussa can offer them, with the current state of magic being what it is. There are only so many known ways to retrieve a soul from beyond.

Their list of questions ends up being flimsy at best. Veth still reads it out diligently, but by the time she’s finished, everyone knows it will be a waste of a trip. No one really feels like saying so, though.

“Maybe,” Fjord says hesitantly, “we postpone a visit to Yussa. Just until tomorrow, in case Beau has any questions?”

Jester seconds the idea immediately, and no one but Veth speaks up against it. Her protests – mainly concerns about wasting time and the risk of the situation only growing worse – peter out quickly, though, and soon enough the vote is unanimous.

“Veth,” Caleb asks her as the group disperses, “could I have a moment of your time?”

She doesn’t quite meet his eyes, but she does nod, and he leads them outside. There’s a small trail paved with rounded stones that wraps loosely around the house, and they fall into step beside one another with an easy familiarity. He waits until they’re far enough away to avoid curious ears before he begins.

“You have been away from home for a while,” he says, pausing afterwards to see if she takes the bait. When she does not, he continues, “Luc has just been through a dangerous ordeal. He may not admit it, but I’m sure he would benefit from the comfort of both of his parents.” Another pause. A glance reveals Veth’s mouth pressed into a flat line, her eyes trained straight ahead. With a sigh, he says, “It is also not a bad thing to want him near, when danger is everywhere like this.”

“I know,” she says stubbornly.

He nods. “You also probably know that, regardless of what the others plan to do, I will happily take you home, Veth Brenatto. I will do it right now if you wish. I have the spells to do it.” He does. He had counted them again this morning as he stared at the final page of Caleb’s spellbook. Just enough to take her there and return here, with one high level spell left over, just in case. “What do you say?”

She doesn’t say anything at all as they wrap around the back of the house. The graves here are older, overgrown in a way that speaks to intention rather than neglect. Birds chirp at one another but do not sing, this close to the corrupted woods.

“When I left,” Veth says at last, voice strained, “I promised the boy I’d come back with you right alongside me. So that he could see that you were okay.”

That was incredibly foolish of her, but he understands. Clearing his throat, he says, “Well, I’m sure he would forgive you if you came back alone. He’s old enough now to understand that these things take time.”

“He’d be devastated,” she says flatly, and nothing else.

They walk a bit further, past the patch that he weeded with Yasha this morning. She was right about the feeling of accomplishment. The clean flower bed might be the only good thing he’s accomplished since he sent Luc home in one piece. He’d had such hope about being able to help and see where that has gotten him. Essek sequestered from everyone, Beauregard off investigating without Caleb, Veth torn from her family again and again. The entire group at one another's throats every other night. All these spells for their benefit, for their safety, and no practical use at all, except for this. If only Veth will let him.

Eventually, he says, “You cannot stay here forever, Veth.”

“I know.”

“I am grateful you are here. But your family – ”

“I know.”

Caleb has known her long enough to recognize when he’s reached the end of her patience. With a gentle nod, he says, “Okay. Just know that I have no expectations. If we visit Yussa, I will not judge you if you return to your family then. And if we do not visit him, I will keep those spells for you, alright?”

She doesn’t look at him, but softly, she replies, “Alright.”

“You may come to me at any time. Tonight, or tomorrow, or the next day. I will be ready.”

Veth is silent. He looks away, to give her privacy, which means he startles slightly when her smaller hand slips into his. It’s not a tight hold, not pulling him to a stop or forcing him to face her, just – an anchor, as if reminding herself that he’s still here. Or perhaps to keep him from wandering away. He squeezes her hand gently in response, careful to keep his hold loose enough that she could pull away at any time.

“Thank you, Caleb,” she says at last.

He doesn’t correct her. She knows what she’s saying. They finish their walk in silence, and she doesn’t drop his hand until they enter the Clay house once more.

§

The afternoon drags on, relentless in its disappointments. Jester tries to send several messages and ends up with a sizable nosebleed that Caduceus patiently tends to. Veth sorts through wilted herbs and bits of mineral from the bag of holding, trying to calculate if they have enough of the correct materials to – someday, with access to an alchemical lab – repair Caleb’s simulacrum form. Caleb, for his part, keeps watch at the windows, waiting for any sign of Beauregard or Yasha returning.

Jester and Caduceus have started on dinner by the time he spies a flash of white feathers and blue fabric. Yasha’s wings are gone as the pair amble into the kitchen a minute later, looking unharmed but also largely dissatisfied. Beauregard in particular seems to be suffering from an excess of energy, despite their recent excursion: her fingers tap restlessly against her bicep, eyes flitting around the room.

“Yasha found you some mushrooms for the soup,” Beauregard tells Jester offhandedly as Yasha produces a cloth-wrapped bundle from her bag. Beauregard’s eyes catch on Caleb’s where he hovers in the opposite doorway and she says, “Babe, want to talk them through which ones are poisonous?”

Yasha nods, pressing a quick kiss to her wife’s cheek before turning to Jester and Caduceus. Beauregard breezes past them, towards Caleb, until she’s close enough for him to see the fresh nettle scrapes on her arms. “Hey. C-2. I want to pick your brain for a second.”

It’s not like he’s busy. “Lead the way.”

She takes him to Caduceus’ room, which she swears she got permission to use earlier. The inside is covered with collections of dead insects and dried flora from the Grove, and he makes idle notes for minor adjustments to Caduceus’ room in the Tower, should he ever have a reason to cast it. If nothing else, maybe he could pass along some notes to Caleb.

Beauregard shuts the door behind her and leans against it. Arms crossed, the muscles in her jaw jump several times before she says, “I’m getting worried that we’re falling behind.”

It is not hard to guess what she means. Ludinus. Ruidus. The Grim Verity. It feels like an eternity ago that they were jettisoned from the key site in Marquet. In reality, it’s been three days. Unfortunately, in the context of how much damage the Martinet could do in that time, it is far too long.

“Did you find anything this afternoon?”

Beauregard shrugs. “Leylines are still visible and magic’s still fucked, so I think it’s safe to assume the solstice is still happening. We couldn’t spot Ruidus, but I’m not sure if we just had a bad vantage point. There was only so far I was going to drag Yasha into the Savalirwood, you know?”

“I understand.” He pats around his pockets, looking for one of his sending stones, before he remembers that it’s probably still on Caleb’s body. “Any word from the mercenary group we ran into? Assuming they still have the stone I gave them.”

“Nah, the stones are fucked, too. Nothing’s coming through on any of them.” She chews on her lip for a moment before she says, “Listen. I obviously think we should do everything in our power to get Caleb back, but – maybe what we said yesterday wasn’t wrong. If the only way to get him back is to fix whatever Ludinus did to the moon, then maybe we need to – not call it a wash, but – ” She lets out a frustrated huff. “I guess what I want to float is the idea that we leave Caleb here, with Cad, on ice, and focus on the root of the problem.”

He blinks at her. Beauregard shifts from one foot to the other, waiting. Watching him carefully, as if bracing for something. Her restless energy from the past few days nearly radiates off her now, down to the fine tremor in her hand that she flexes away unconsciously. You think I don’t feel useless? she’d snapped at Essek in the early hours of this morning.

Beauregard has determined a way forward. A way to be of use. He would be a fool to deny her, but – “Do you intend to go alone?”

Her eyes pierce into him. “Fuck no. This is wizard bullshit, man. I need a wizard, and I specifically need Caleb.” She takes a deep breath. “You’ve got all of his memories, right?”

“Beauregard,” he says, slightly pained. A path forward is only viable if she survives long enough to pursue it. “I am only a wizard as far as the handful of spells I have left will get me. I cannot protect either of us with cantrips forever. If – when – I go down in battle, there is no getting me up. You would be alone.”

She flinches, almost too quick to catch. “Okay, so maybe you let me handle the fighting, but – ”

“There is no but. In this form, I – " He swallows. "I am not able to help you." Hearing the words out loud drags his heart into his stomach, shoulders curling under the weight of it all. It compounds on his failure of a conversation with Veth this afternoon, but he can’t think about that right now, lest it drag him under completely. "I understand that this impedes the mission, I do, but I cannot offer you false promises here.”

Beauregard is quiet for a moment. He waits as patiently as he can, his mind ticking away the seconds and picking apart his surroundings. Caduceus has a collection of smooth stones atop his dresser. Beauregard flexes her hand again. The rug beneath his feet is uneven. She has gray in her hair, and he would like to keep her alive long enough for it to go completely white.

At last, she says stiffly, “I can’t sit this out waiting for you, man.”

He knows. Caleb knows. “I would not ask you to.” Her shoulders drop slightly as some of the tension releases. He thinks for a moment before saying, “We need to find you a suitable companion in this. You say you need a wizard, ja? I will not volunteer Essek – ”

She makes a face. “Agreed.”

“ – but maybe we can reach out to Allura, by way of Yussa. Regardless, we will need to find a way to send word to the Grim Verity at some point.” Beauregard nods. He feels compelled to add, “I think you will have a hard time dissuading Yasha from accompanying you, this time. You should prepare for that.”

“Yeah,” Beauregard says, shoulders curling slightly as she hunches in on herself. “We talked about it a bit this afternoon.”

“Good,” he says firmly. “There’s no need to decide tonight. I believe there are plans to consult Yussa tomorrow – we can ask after Allura then. For now, let’s – ” He falters, not even sure what hollow consolations he can offer. “Let’s focus on dinner. We would not want to disappoint Jester. She has been planning this soup for a while.”

“Soup isn’t going to fix this,” Beauregard says petulantly, “but yeah, I get it.” Rubbing a hand over her face, she sighs heavily before meeting his eyes. Beauregard seems prepared to say something else, but at the last moment, her expression shutters slightly and she says, “C’mon. I should probably taste-test dinner to make sure it won’t poison the rest of you. Monk privileges.”

He forces a small smile. “My life in your hands.”

Beauregard’s expression creases, pained, before she says, “Well. It would fucking suck to watch you die twice. So.” Before he can apologize, she’s turned and opened the door, disappearing through it with a rough, “Let’s get moving.”

The soup is pronounced edible, and the Clay family joins them for dinner, pulling up spare stools and extra chairs. Jester disappears for a while, but she eventually returns with Essek in tow, dragging him along with an unforgiving grip on his forearm. Caleb swears he sees Essek’s jaw twitch, like the verbal component for Misty Step is caught just behind his teeth, but he looks too tired to put up a fight. The bags under his eyes appear worse in the light from the fireplace.

Someone puts a bowl in front of him, so Caleb makes an effort to pick up his spoon and force a few bites down, but in truth, he spends most of the meal watching Jester coax Essek into eating a few spoonfuls of soup. Essek nods along to her tangents about this and that, but ignores any wider discussions, stirring his bowl without doing much else with it. When Jester puts a hunk of bread in his hand, he takes a polite bite, but doesn’t seem interested in another. Overall, Essek seems very far away, and Caleb can’t help but wonder if his mind is down the hall instead.

It takes until the meal is wrapping up for him to realize the source of Essek’s distraction. When Fjord knocks over a bowl and Essek goes to prestidigitate the mess away, he finally gets a good look at Essek’s hands.

They’re covered in small splotches of ink.

Caleb’s entire body goes cold, every fiber freezing over and locking him into place. Trapping him, eyes trained on Essek. Around him, Beauregard makes a begrudging sound of approval as the spill is magicked away, and people begin to rise from their seats to clear away the dishes. Essek doesn’t waste time, obviously intent on a quick getaway even if dinner has gone far better than breakfast, and is halfway back to his room before Jester turns around. Caleb remains seated, doing the math, ticking off the hours since the failed resurrection attempt last night. Ticking off the hours since they arrived. A tangle of panic and nerves begins to knot in his chest as the number ticks up.

“Hey.” A gentle tug on his sleeve interrupts him, and he looks down to see Veth at his elbow, a stack of bowls in one hand. She nods towards his mostly untouched dinner. “Are you finished with that?”

“Ah, yes,” he says distractedly, choosing to ignore her small frown. It occurs to him that there are only three wizards in this house, and he did not bring any ink. Why would he? And as far as he noticed, Essek did not pack anything from their workroom, which means – “Veth, a question. Do you have any ink on you?”

Veth’s stare goes sharp. “Did you have an idea?”

Not in the way she hopes, but – “Perhaps. Ink?”

She unceremoniously dumps the dishes onto the table and darts into the living room. Caleb pushes his chair back and follows, trying not to exude panic in a way that the others might notice. He finds Veth rifling through her pack, grumbling under her breath, and after a moment, she looks up and says, “I had some, but it’s not here. Would regular ink work?”

It is terribly frustrating to be correct sometimes. He breathes through a fresh wave of panic and tries to focus. The last thing he needs is Veth banging down Essek’s door in another confrontation. He swallows around the guilt of a minor lie and says, “Ja, regular is fine for now.” When Veth goes back to her pack to look for it, he asks, trying to sound offhand, “Perhaps Jester borrowed your good ink? When did you last see it?”

Her mouth twists unhappily as she hands over a bottle of mundane ink. “I remember it was here when I got my spellbook out this morning because I almost spilled it. But I didn’t look when I put it back. Why would Jester want it?”

This morning. Nine hours ago, his mind supplies. Caleb feels the knot in his chest loosen, and he’s able to take a full breath again. He can work with that. Trying not to sound overly relieved, he says, “Who knows. She used to steal my ink sometimes.” He thumbs the peeling label on the ink bottle in his hand. “But as I said, this will work. Thank you, Veth.”

“Of course,” she replies, watching him closely. “What’s your idea?”

“I am not quite sure just yet,” he lies. He needs to speak with Essek before morning, but he would much rather do it when the others are asleep. Fewer eyes and such. For now, in the interest of keeping Veth’s mind off the stolen ink, he says, “Keep me company while I work through something?”

They settle back at the emptied dining room table, where Caleb sketches out loose ideas around the transmuter’s stone’s resurrection properties that will eventually amount to nothing new. Veth returns to her task with the herbs, but he can feel her eyes on him more than once. Fjord and Jester have disappeared, as have Beauregard and Yasha. Caduceus wanders in and out, leaving tea for them at one point. The cats come to see what they’re working on eventually, and Veth has to keep them distracted by tossing scraps of paper across the room with Mage Hand.

Finally, as the hour draws late enough that the others’ voices begin to reappear around the house, Caleb blots his most recent page. Veth looks up, blinking, and says, “Anything?”

He shakes his head, thinking of Essek doing actual transcription just down the hall. Quietly, he says, “Perhaps tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Veth repeats firmly. “You’ll think of something.” His insides twist painfully, as if a knife has slipped between his organs. She doesn’t seem to notice – there is nothing but worn pride in her voice when Veth says, “You’re very smart.”

It is suddenly very difficult to swallow, but he forces himself to do so. Carefully not looking at his pile of useless scribbles, he says, “Thank you, Veth.”

§

Caduceus opts out of the sleepover, on account of having his own bed down the hall and presumably an interest in not having a repeat of last night. Beauregard and Yasha end up taking the available guest room – “Please remember, the walls are so thin,” Fjord begs – and Veth disappears shortly before everyone else turns in, apparently doing something on her own for a bit. That leaves just Jester and Fjord in the living room with him, making the space feel oddly melancholy, even if their returned closeness with each other settles something in Caleb’s chest.

It also makes it much easier to slip away.

As soon as Fjord’s quiet snores join Jester’s slow, steady breaths, Caleb carefully picks his way out of the bedding and pads to the kitchen. A few of the cats open a curious eye as he passes them, but none make to follow him. With a cantrip and some ingenuity, he manages to put together two cups of something drinkable without waking the entire house. He carries them carefully down the hall, trying not to spill, and stops before Essek’s door.

There’s some shuffling of mugs and components, but eventually he manages to extract the wire from his pouch. Casting, he whispers into it, “I know you would prefer not to, but I need to speak with you. Please.”

A moment passes. Essek does not respond to the message, but after nearly a full minute, the door opens slightly. Essek’s face – distinctly annoyed, an unfairly good look on him – fills the crack, and his eyes flicker down to the mugs before returning to his face.

“Yes?”

“May I come in?” When Essek’s eyes narrow dangerously, he sighs and adds, “We both know that if I try anything, you can scatter me back into snow without even having to try. Please?”

Essek doesn’t reply beyond a slight deepening of his frown, but after a moment he steps back and the door opens wider. Caleb hurries inside, in case Essek changes his mind, and finds himself in a very dark room. The meager light from the hallway vanishes as the door closes behind him and old instincts flood his body with adrenaline, telling him to free his hands, to face the threat, to duck in preparation for –

No well-timed spell comes for his back. Instead, four globules of green light bob into existence, illuminating the space. He turns around, unable to keep the surprise off his face, and Essek, still lingering unhappily by the door, snaps, “What? I assume you are still bound to human limitations.”

It takes a moment for his heart rate to slow, but eventually it settles enough that his voice comes out steady. “Ja, I – I am. I just – thank you.”

“I don’t want you to trip and ruin something,” is all Essek says as he brushes past him, taking a seat at the small writing desk in the room. It sits across from the bed, which is currently occupied by a still figure under a white sheet. Even in the low light, it is not hard to pick out familiar shapes on its form.

He hurriedly glances away, back to the mugs in his hands, and says, “I made us some hot cocoa. I am sorry that there is nothing stronger in the house to add. The Nein drank through Beauregard’s stash last night.”

Predictably, Essek does not look up from where he’s retrieved his quill and resumed writing, but his shoulders do tense slightly at the mention of the previous evening. “I’m not thirsty.”

“Ja, just as you have not been hungry.” Essek’s ear flicks in annoyance. Caleb ignores it, stepping forward and carefully setting one of the mugs on a small part of the desk not yet consumed by spellbook-quality paper. “I will leave this here, in case you change your mind.”

There is no response to that, which – fair enough. He takes a bracing sip of his own drink before he says, “If my math is right, you should still have a few hours left on that transcription.” He pauses, noting the way Essek’s shoulders stiffen further, before adding softly, “There is still time to stop.”

Essek’s jaw clenches. The air in the room begins to sting in his nose, growing sharp with arcana and dunamis. Essek’s quill slows but does not still.

“He offered you that spell before.” I offered you that spell before. “You had a good reason for turning it down.”

Essek’s quill does stop then, his knuckles paling with how tightly he grips it. Through gritted teeth, he says, “And now I have a good reason to learn it.”

A wiser man would tread carefully. As it is, Caleb asks, “Is desperation really such a good reason, my dear?”

Maybe it is the endearment, or the sentiment, or days of carefully withheld fury, but between one blink and the next, the gravity around him tightens exponentially. He loses grip on his mug as his arms are forced to his sides, his feet lifted from the floor. Any air in his lungs is quickly evacuated as Essek, hand extended, turns and rises from his seat, forcing the hold even tighter.

Caleb remembers watching him kill a Volstrucker this way. Even at the time, bleeding from a neck wound and terribly disappointed by the outcome, he’d thought that Essek’s magic was terrible in its beauty. He still thinks that, even as it crushes him.

“You dare,” Essek hisses, his face a tight mask of fury.

Caleb wishes he had his ring of telepathy. It is only a handful of feet away, cold on a corpse’s hand. As it is, he communicates what he can by lifting a single, unimpressed eyebrow.

The crush of gravity tightens further which – he should have seen that coming, honestly.

Essek, still seething, snaps, “You do not get to call me desperate. You do not get a say in what I do. And you do not – ” Oh, those are tears in his eyes. “ – get to pretend that you are worthy to replace Caleb Widogast.”

Caleb’s brow furrows in genuine confusion as he stares down at the most intelligent and idiotic man he has ever known, but Essek scoffs at whatever his face is doing. A tear escapes, apparently unnoticed, as Essek says, “Don’t. The others may be pacified with whatever facsimile you’re providing them, but you do not get to try that with me. Caleb is dead. He is gone, even if I am the only one who cares, and I – I – ” Essek’s breathing is terribly uneven, his chest heaving. “You do not get to pretend like he is still here.”

Something in Caleb’s chest fractures as he watches Essek, tears streaming down his face, hackles raised in what should be a safehouse full of friends. Furious because of all the wrong ideas. He isn’t sure there’s a way to communicate that succinctly, but perhaps – hm. Struggling against the gravity crushing down around him, Caleb sucks in one more breath and wheezes out, “Ssol.”

Essek blinks. Caleb tries to gesture to himself, but his arms remain trapped by the vices around him, allowing only a faint twitch of fingers. Still, he watches Essek clock the movement, and again he attempts to breathe out, “Ssol.”

Echo. In the way a bell reverberates in an empty hall, or the way a shadow can be pulled from a discarded timeline. The beginning stages of anamnesis are called ssolsse: the echoes of a past life beginning to return.

I am just that, he tries to telegraph. Just Caleb’s echo.

The spell drops, and he tumbles to the floor in a tangle of limbs. He will have new bruises tomorrow, but for now, he gratefully sucks in one breath after another. This body does not need to breathe, but the animal instinct in his mind struggles to remember.

When he regains his bearings, he glances around for Essek and sees nothing. There is a moment where he worries that Essek has fled, that he is already a continent away, but then a soft, unsteady breath exhales in the corner. Tucked beside the head of the bed, Essek sits on the floor with his legs drawn up, as if in defense. His head is bowed, shoulders shaking with quiet grief.

Caleb does not approach in fear of startling him worse, but quietly he whispers, “Essek?”

A faint whimper. The lights above wink out, and Caleb casts a new set of his own. He wishes that he knew Mage Hand, but in its absence, he moves slowly, hoping to avoid surprises. His knees protest as he stands, but he fetches Essek’s hot cocoa from the desk and immediately returns to the floor. Carefully, he inches forward until he can set the mug by Essek’s foot before retreating to give him space.

“Please drink something,” he murmurs in Undercommon. Essek’s shoulders begin to shake worse. “I know. But please. I just want to talk.”

The lights above wink out and need to be recast three times over before Essek’s face slowly emerges. He doesn’t meet Caleb’s eyes, but he quietly picks up the mug with a shaking hand. Hiccups slightly, from all the crying, as he hugs it to himself.

Caleb wonders if this is the first time Essek has let himself cry over this. It is a terrible thought to imagine him locked up in this room with a corpse, forging ahead with a stiff upper lip. He wants nothing more than to gather Essek up in his arms and hold him, but he forces himself to stay where he is.

“How about you drink and I will talk, and when I am done you may do as you wish, hm?”

Essek’s expression crumbles slightly, as if the idea of retribution no longer holds any appeal, but he does lift the mug to his lips. Caleb takes that as a sign of agreement.

“I am sorry that you have felt alone in this. It was never my intent, nor the intent of our friends, I am sure. You may not have seen much of it, but please believe me when I say that they care a great deal about finding a way to raise him.” He huffs out a humorless laugh. “If you ask any of them, they will tell you I am far from a substitute. They are simply in need of a wizard, and I am available. If you have seen their kindness towards me and assumed it was misplaced affection, well – that is just how they are. They have been… very good to me, all things considered, but they do not truly treat me as they would Caleb.” Essek says nothing, still nursing his cocoa and keeping his eyes firmly downcast. Caleb sighs and says, “I have no desire to replace him. Quite the opposite, actually but – that is all.”

Quiet settles over the room like a sheet atop a corpse. Essek’s breath still rattles uneasily as he breathes. The lights go out – Caleb casts them again.

Essek’s voice is barely audible when he says, “You keep sending me food.”

It is less a question than an accusation, but Caleb says, “Yes.”

“Clarabelle keeps bringing me cats.”

“I may have suggested that to her at one point.”

Essek’s shoulders draw in even tighter as he says, “You held me, back at the house. Before you told me.”

At this, Caleb does wince slightly. “I did. I am sorry for that. I – ” Had just wanted to hold him, to feel him real and safe in his arms. “ – should have told you before I offered that.”

“Why?” Essek asks. Before he can ask for clarification, Essek finally looks up at him and asks, “Why do you keep doing those things?”

Essek’s eyes are rimmed purple from the crying. There are still tear tracks on his cheeks. A lock of hair has come loose, falling into his eyes.

“Because I care for you,” Caleb replies softly. In this form, in every form. Once, Caleb had polymorphed into a bumblebee for an hour, and, even with no mind at all, he had settled on Essek’s shoulder and remained there, filled with the same satisfaction as if he had stumbled upon a flower overflowing with pollen and nectar.

Essek stares at him. Licks his lips. Says slowly, as if testing the give of thin ice on a frozen pond, “It felt like you were trying to ingratiate yourself. It felt like you were trying to distract me, like you did the others.”

He can hear Beauregard’s voice in his mind: this is such a fucked up way to tell him, man. In Blumenthal, on their way back to Rexxentrum – he’d thought he was being kind. Saving Jester from having to tell Essek, saving Essek from having to hear secondhand.

Helplessly, he shakes his head. “That wasn’t my intent. I – ” Just wanted to take care of them. That had been Caleb’s goal, his goal, from the moment it became clear that he would need to involve the Nein. Keep them safe, get them home, raise Caleb for them if he could. Except he’s fucked it up horribly at every turn. His voice comes out strangled when he says, “I’m sorry.”

Essek sets aside the mug. Slowly, he unfolds himself, inching closer until he can rest the barest touch of fingertips to the back of Caleb’s hand. Up close, Essek’s eyes are bloodshot, pale eyelashes clotted with tears.

“I thought,” Essek whispers, “that you didn’t care if he came back. That since your mind was present, the rest didn’t matter.”

That drags a wet, hysterical laugh from Caleb. “This body is nearly made of paper. You think I do not care that I cannot fully access my own magic, that I could never learn something new again?”

Essek’s eyes are unwavering when he says, “I assumed you had thoughts on how to remedy those obstacles.”

How to even begin to explain how wrong he is. “I have no interest in remaining in this form indefinitely. I would like my body back, in the sense that I would like to see Caleb restored. He is me, Essek. That body over there. I have no dreams of – lichhood, or whatever other ideas you’ve imagined.” He swallows and, perhaps boldly, rests a hand atop Essek’s. “You say I have been attempting to distract you all. Perhaps that is true, to the degree that watching you mourn is horrible, and I wished to alleviate the pain where I could. That is – that was – ” He looks up to keep the tears from falling. “Even before I cast this spell, my plan – Caleb’s plan, our plan – was always to keep you all safe. If he fell, I would watch over you all until his return. That is what I have been trying to do.” He closes his eyes and the tears leak out, oddly cold on his face. Like ice water. “Apparently I have failed by quite a margin. I’m sorry.”

Essek’s hand withdraws from his. Caleb mourns the loss of contact, right up until a gentle hand cups the side of his face. His eyes blink open, displacing more tears in the process, but when he looks down, Essek is watching him. It is difficult to categorize, but for the first time, it feels like he’s being seen.

“Caleb Widogast,” Essek says, voice soft but enunciating clearly. “You foolish man.”

As if Essek has cut the strings holding him up, Caleb collapses into himself, and Essek is there to catch him. Familiar arms that he has missed terribly these past few days wrap around him, gathering him close. Essek smells like arcana and herbs. Caleb drags the smell of him in by the lungful as he quietly dampens the shoulder of Essek’s tunic.

A hesitant hand begins to comb through his hair and he goes completely boneless against Essek. From the vibrations in his chest, Essek is saying something, but the tone and cadence suggests a string of soothing Undercommon that does not require a reply.

When he finally calms, Caleb takes a deep breath and says, into the fabric of Essek’s clothes, “I have been so worried about you.”

The hand in his hair pauses briefly before resuming its work. Quietly, Essek replies, “I know. I realize that now. I am sorry I did not, before.”

Eventually they separate without going far: Essek’s hand remains on Caleb’s knee as he tucks a piece of Essek’s hair back into place. They breathe together for a while, settling, until Essek notices the broken cup from earlier. He wipes away the spilled cocoa with a cantrip, but his eyes are pained when he looks back.

“I’m sorry for – earlier. Are you hurt?”

“No,” he says, because he probably isn’t, and even if he was, there isn’t much to be done about it. Essek’s eyes narrow at him, though, as if he can hear the caveats, so he amends, “Nothing serious, I promise.” He takes Essek’s hand on his knee and lifts it to touch the side of his face. Smiling, he says, “I am still here, right? Not snow yet.”

Essek doesn’t look mollified. Hoarsely, he says, “I was – fairly harsh to Beauregard, when she admitted to bruising you. It seems I am not any better.”

“We have all taken swings at one another in bad situations,” he says firmly, “verbally or otherwise. It is never our finest moment.”

“I am sorry all the same.”

He lets Essek withdraw his hand, but not before he squeezes it gently. “And I am sorry for the way that I told you about the events in Blumenthal. I realize now that was – poor judgment, on my part, whatever my intentions might have been.”

Essek nods, staring at his hands. Still covered in ink.

Caleb reaches out and touches one of the splotches, running a thumb over it as if that could remove the stain. “I still must ask you to reconsider learning that spell, my friend.”

Essek sighs, threading their fingers together and keeping him there. “I would tell you that it is our best chance, but I assume you came to that conclusion long before I did.”

This is what he’s missed: Essek’s shrewdness. The others are sharp in their own ways, Beauregard in particular, but Essek meets him at a place where no one else does. It almost feels strange, feeling so loved even as he is caught. Maybe it’s about being seen.

“You’re not wrong,” he tells him. “I had the thought back in Blumenthal. An arcane workaround for a divine problem. But after the transmuter’s stone failed, I was… suddenly much less confident. Especially seeing how badly they took the failed resurrections.”

Essek barks out a humorless laugh. “Perhaps if I had seen that, I would not have suggested another attempt to Jester.” His expression takes on a new weight when he says, “I just wanted more data. Jester said her deity did not seem certain. It seemed – worth pursuing. But if I am being honest, I mostly wanted to do something. It felt as though the others were falling stagnant.” With a painful twist to his mouth, Essek adds, “My apologies for assuming that they were being distracted by you.”

“You are forgiven,” he says, gently squeezing Essek’s hand. Then: “If we are offering confessions, you should know that I did not mention the possibility of a wish to the others. And I did not tell Veth because I knew she would come to you.” He waits until he can catch Essek’s eye before he says, “I do not want this for you.”

Nearly a year ago, when the ink finally dried on the last iteration of Wish, Caleb had offered Essek his spellbook without hesitation. Essek had asked for time to think, which became a full month, until at last he declined. I don’t trust myself with it, he’d admitted, and Caleb, who had only begun to trust himself with that sort of power, had quietly understood. Even if Caleb trusted Essek, trusting oneself was another matter entirely.

If he felt that Essek trusted himself now, they would not be having this conversation. But what he said earlier holds true: Essek does not seem sure. He seems desperate. They are separate beasts with different claws.

“What can I do?” Essek asks without seeming to expect an answer. “I will never forgive myself if I don’t try.”

Gently, Caleb tugs on their entwined hands, and Essek follows him easily enough, dropping his head onto his shoulder and humming a small sound of contentment when arms wrap around him to gather him close. Essek’s hand settles over his heart, clutching onto the fabric of his shirt and just – holding him. It reminds him of their last interaction in Rexxentrum, except kinder.

“You know that my spell reserves are not in good shape,” he murmurs, to which Essek hums in acknowledgement. “I have promised to save a spell for Veth, to take her home.” He swallows, heart a thrumming, fragile little thing in his throat, before he says, “You should know that I have also saved a spell for you.”

He feels Essek tense in his arms. “What?”

It feels like a luxury to lean down and rest his cheek on Essek’s hair. Softly, he says, “My only spell at the ninth level is yours, Essek Thelyss.”

He can almost hear the mechanisms of Essek’s mind at work, thoughts whirring past at impossible speeds. Essek says, “But – ” And then, “What.” It takes another few seconds before Essek can slow down enough to string together a full sentence. “Beauregard mentioned a large – reptile of some sort, in your battle. I assumed – was that not your casting of Shapechange?”

It is a small thrill, to surprise him even after all this time. Unable to keep the faint pride from his voice, Caleb says, “Polymorph. At the fourth level.”

Essek pulls back to stare at him. “But then – oh. You had mentioned – you had the idea several days ago. Of course.” A familiar furrow appears in his brow as he says, “You did not cast it then?”

“I had intended to,” he admits. “Not in Blumenthal, but once we were settled here. I was waiting for confirmation that the clerics could not provide another option before I exhausted the majority of my reserves for something that in all likelihood would not work. And – I was hoping to do it without the others knowing, so that another failure would not devastate them further. But then you beat me to it by a handful of hours last night.” Essek’s expression turns pained. “I know you did not mean to. But suddenly it felt too tenuous to attempt.”

“Then it seems I am an even greater fool than I realized,” Essek says with no small amount of bitterness. He goes quiet for some time, obviously thinking something over, before he asks, “And now? Are things still so tenuous?”

Caleb shrugs. “Likely. But I will not stand by and watch you torture yourself with this.”

Essek stares at him long enough that he starts to feel like prey. Caleb licks his lips nervously, opening his mouth to speak and – finds himself suddenly with an armful of wizard as Essek nearly tackles them both to the ground with a hug. The arms around him drive the air from his lungs as Essek burrows into his chest, making an urgent, pained noise as he attempts to worm even closer. It is all Caleb can do to wrap his arms securely around him in return, keeping him close.

They stay there like that for a time, until Essek says something muffled that is lost to the fabric of his shirt.

“Say that again?”

Essek turns his head to rest a cheek against his shoulder and repeats, “Do you plan to do it tonight?”

He considers it, idly running a hand up and down Essek’s arm as he does so. At last, he says, “I’d like to try before the others wake up, I think. But perhaps, if you’re amenable – a rest first?” Quieter, he adds, “I worry you have not been trancing.”

Essek hums, acknowledging his concern, but remains damningly silent otherwise, only nestling in a little closer.

“A rest, then. Just long enough for you to trance, and then we will give it a go.”

Essek draws back just far enough to look at him, frowning slightly. “My practical knowledge of simulacra is out of date – will that be enough rest for you?”

“I have no spell reserves to restore,” he replies with a shrug. “It is a bit immaterial to me, in this form.”

Essek’s frown deepens by a small degree. “If you’re certain.”

What a luxury, to be able to lean forward and press a kiss to his temple. “I am.”

There is no question of Essek joining the communal sleeping arrangement in the living room. Instead, Caleb sneaks out and quietly gathers an assortment of pillows and blankets from Jester’s setup to bring them back to Essek, who helps him create a makeshift bedroll of sorts. As his joints complain about the wooden floors, Caleb spares a moment to be jealous of his corpse, who is not even able to fully appreciate the bed that he is occupying.

Essek does not trance laying down beside him, as he would at home in their bed, but they end up with Caleb’s head in Essek’s lap while he trances upright. Despite the unforgiving floor and the slightly awkward angle of his neck, sleep comes for him quickly enough, warm and safe and surrounded by the smell of Essek’s herbal soap. Fingers comb gently through his hair until their movement eventually slows, and his last coherent thought before unconsciousness pulls him under is that Essek’s touch does not leave him.

He wakes up – groggy, eyes stinging – to the same hand gently cupping his face. When his vision clarifies, Essek swims into focus above him, still looking tired and worn but – better.

“Guten Morgen,” Caleb mumbles. It is just past two o’clock in the morning. “Shall we get started?”

Together, they clear away the bedding and light a set of candles to avoid the hassle of recasting arcane lights. Caleb’s spellbook is unearthed from the stacks of paper on the desk where Essek had been copying from it, and they spend nearly an hour hashing out the precise phrasing of the wish.

At last, they are satisfied, if not necessarily happy with the result. It is the sort of puzzle one could spend a life worrying over, Caleb suspects. At some point, you just have to cast.

He weighs the spellbook in his hands, mostly for something to hold. The spell he already knows, having been baked into this snapshot of his brain when Caleb cast him, but he rolls the verbal component around in his mouth like hard candy, practicing.

“Come here.”

He turns to find Essek, pearl in hand, his mouth set in a determined line. On old instinct, Caleb leans down, and the pearl moves before his forehead as Essek begins to cast. As the warm possibility of a second chance settles over him, Essek says, “I don’t know if that will help, but you have it. I will be here beside you as well.”

“My thanks, Herr Thelyss.”

When he goes to straighten up, Essek catches him by the back of his neck, keeping him close. The furrow in his brow is back, thinking hard, and it isn’t difficult to guess what about when Essek’s eyes flicker briefly to his mouth. Essek makes no move to kiss him, though, and after a moment, Caleb decides to put him out of his misery.

“Later,” he promises with a small smile. “In the correct body.”

It isn’t something that matters to him, and certainly not to Caleb, but the distinction seems to be important to Essek. Still, he doesn’t seem relieved by the provided out: the line of Essek’s shoulders remains tense, the furrow just as deep. After a moment of further consideration, Essek leans in and presses a kiss to his cheek. If Caleb is a smitten fool for how it causes his stomach to flip, then a fool he will happily be.

“I will hold you to that,” Essek whispers before pulling away.

Essek peels back the sheet that rests atop Caleb’s body, carefully plucking the copper pieces from his eyes leftover from Caduceus’ ritual. It is – strange, seeing his own face cold and slack. Not painful in the way it would be if he looked upon a corpse of a friend, but still oddly sharp. His corpse had not bothered him so much in Blumenthal, when all he could think about were the others. Keeping Luc’s eyes averted, keeping Beauregard’s violent grief in check, keeping hope alive as he suggested retreating to the Grove. Now, in the candlelight, he thinks about the sound Caleb made as he died and finds himself abruptly grateful that he had not eaten before this. Though Caleb’s charred body has been restored even when his soul had not, the fear Caleb mentioned to Yasha – the animal kind, which knows only pain and death and fears them both on a biological level – rises behind his sternum. It is, without question, for the best that his knowledge will be wiped away when this form returns to snow.

He grips Caleb’s spellbook as Essek comes to stand beside him, and together they look down upon Caleb. Perhaps it is hubris, but as he begins to cast at the height of his power, he cannot help but think that it should be as simple as transmutation – turning a corpse back into a person.

Arcana, charged by the lingering solstice, pervades every sense Caleb has: his tongue feels heavy when he speaks. He is a man who makes things, remakes things, and now he attempts to do so with the fabric of fate itself. The small room in the Grove falls away, lost to him, as he feels the telltale itch of blood beginning to seep from his nose. A ringing in his ears vibrates the very bone of his skull as his hands shake badly against the familiar leather of his spellbook. Caleb’s spellbook. His spellbook. The distinction loses meaning as he grabs onto the strings of the universe and pulls.

And then – oppressive silence and a terrible weight, which pulls him under and does not let go.

§

He feels heavy.

That is Caleb’s only coherent thought for the first few seconds as he struggles to adjust to the weight. It is far less like a body draped atop him and more like someone has replaced his blood with mercury. There is a new science to breathing that he has to discover, dragging in tiny gasps of air until his brain stops screaming that he’s suffocating.

When he manages to drag his eyes open, he’s met with the ceiling of the guest room. Daylight filters in from one of the windows, throwing shadows of the Grove’s many trees against the far wall. He’s in a bed, although the give of soft down does little to ease the screaming of his muscles.

Caleb makes a mental note to add a few details to his spellbook under the section for anticipated caster rebound, and then promptly makes the mistake of trying to move his head. Years of training keep a worse sound locked behind his teeth, but a small groan still manages to escape. It’s enough to startle a small creature curled up against his side, which yowls and promptly jumps off the bed.

Before he can fully parse the sound – Marta? – there is a sudden intake of breath from another corner of the room. A moment later, Essek appears above him, concern and relief written in contrasts all over his face. Hands come to rest on either side of his face, and while he prepares for it to hurt, there is no pain as Essek’s cool palms settle against his skin.

Nothing short of reverent, Essek says, “You’re awake.”

“Ja.” The word scrapes out of his throat, but it still doesn’t hurt as much as moving. Deciding to get ambitious with a full sentence, he croaks, “Did it work?”

Essek sags in relief at the sound of his voice. His thumbs smooth back and forth over the tender skin beneath his eyes as he says, “Yes. Yes, it worked. He’s – I’ll bring you to him, in a moment. You brilliant man.”

Relief slams into him, almost painful in its joy. Perhaps it is selfish – it is almost definitely selfish – but he cannot stop the laugh that bubbles out of his throat, or the tears that pool in his eyes. Caleb is back. Caleb is back. Returned to his friends, who have carried their grief so heavily these past few days. There is nothing but further struggle ahead, but for a moment, they are whole again.

He can finally set down the mantle that he took up the moment that Caleb fell. Their wizard has returned. Caleb can look out for them, now, with the full force of his power behind him. It feels like being sat before a feast after surviving on scraps.

A tear falls onto his cheek as Essek smiles down at him, wet-eyed as well. The hands on his face brush it away and tuck a stray piece of hair back, infinitely gentle. When Essek leans in, he does so slowly, as if to give him the option to decline. As if he ever would.

It is not an ambitious kiss by any measure: mostly it tastes like salt. His mouth is still as unwieldy as the rest of him, but Essek doesn’t seem to mind, and in the end it is more of a press of lips than anything else. When Essek pulls back, he whispers hoarsely, “Thank you.”

Caleb smiles at him. It hurts like hell to do so, and it probably looks more than a little pained, but Essek softens all the same. “You are very welcome, Essek Thelyss.”

Such a luxury, to taste that name in his mouth again. To know that he can call the others by their names as well and not be rebuffed. He feels like the entire sun has been tucked behind his ribs, warming him.

“The others will want to see you,” Essek says, which pushes that sunlight feeling even further through him. “Are you up for company?”

“In here?”

Essek shakes his head. “No, no, I will bring you to them. You shouldn’t walk, but we can make other arrangements.”

What a hardship to have such brilliant, talented friends who care so deeply for him. Certainly it makes it easy to agree. He gets one more kiss to the forehead before Essek slides off the bed and slips from the room, returning a minute later with Yasha in tow. She smiles hesitantly when she sees him.

“Hello, Caleb Two.” Yasha glances at Essek before saying, “Would you – Essek said you might have trouble walking. Would you mind if I carried you?”

“Not at all. I leave myself in your capable hands, Yasha Nydoorin.”

It is – not a pleasant experience, being lifted from the bed, but Yasha is as gentle as she can be. Caleb ends up tucked into her arms as Essek nervously flits around, obviously distressed by the small noises that escape Caleb’s mouth as his muscles try to riot. She carries him down the hall, into the living room, where everyone is waiting.

The Nein are scattered about, remnants of the sleepover still tossed about the floor. Fjord and Caduceus sit on a pile of blankets, watching Beauregard talk from her perch in one of the armchairs. Jester and Veth are crammed onto the loveseat, interjecting at various points, and between them, swaddled in a heavy quilt is – is –

Caleb Widogast, alive and more or less well, sees them first, eyes glancing away from Beauregard and immediately catching on his. He doesn’t smile, necessarily, but his eyes crease as he looks at him in a way that exudes contentment. Caleb is here. Breathing. Whole. The last bit of worry in his chest quietly unravels, and he finds himself making the same expression in return.

They all seem so happy clustered around Caleb that for a moment he wonders if he should be intruding. But then Beauregard notices them in the doorway, and the rest turn to see, and a flurry of cheers and smiles go up all around. Everyone begins talking at once, and Jester jumps up and runs to them, grabbing onto his hand and talking faster than he can follow right now. He thinks she might be saying thank you.

Essek shoos her away and Yasha brings him to the middle of the remaining pillow pile for everyone to gather around. Caleb feels Essek fiddle with the gravity around him, his body going lighter, and then he’s eased from Yasha’s arms to sit and lean against Essek. True to form, the noise only gets worse as everyone tries to speak over one another, but he catches Fjord’s approving, “Well done, Caleb Two,” and Veth’s watery smile and Beauregard’s gentle if still painful shove to his shoulder as she says, “Can’t believe you were holding out on us.”

On the couch, Caleb’s mouth does twitch into a small smile, then, even if his demeanor remains serious around the edges. His voice is soft but clear when he speaks. With a nod, he simply says, “Thank you.”

It is more than enough – he knows everything Caleb would tell him anyway.

“So what now?” Beauregard asks when the chatter has settled slightly. “We’ve got one and a half Calebs – ” Essek makes an annoyed sound of protest in his throat. “ – and the moon is still fucked. What’s the plan?”

She isn’t wrong – there is a great deal more to do. But it will be a few days before Caleb is back to full capacity, and personally, he will be feeling the spell’s rebound for some time yet. Veth will need to return home, eventually, and Caleb will need to see Luc, but for now –

“Lunch,” Caleb says firmly, for the both of them. “After that, maybe a nap. And then,” he offers Beauregard a strained smile, “we finish what we started.”

“Well said,” Caduceus rumbles as Jester cheers, throwing her arms up and saying, “Yeah! Shove that stupid moon right back where it came from!”

Essek sighs, and Caleb glances at him with a small smile. Caleb’s eyes catch his next, and his expression softens at whatever he sees there. The same naked affection for Essek, perhaps. As he’d expected, there is no jealousy at the sight of Essek beside him, an arm wrapped around his waist to keep him steady: to them, Essek caring for one Caleb is the same as caring for the other.

As everyone begins to scatter for lunch preparations, Caleb stands from the couch with only slight unsteadiness, clutching the quilt that someone wrapped around him. He approaches the two of them, accepting a bracing hand from Essek as he eases his way down into the pillows. There will be discussions later with Caleb – about how long he will stay, about what exactly has happened – but for now, it is a simple and wonderful thing to watch Caleb wrap his arms around Essek and hold him close. He gives them a moment, noting the hitch in Essek’s breath as he grabs onto Caleb’s arm, before meeting Caleb’s eye and leaning in as well.

There, in the Clays’ living room, two Caleb Widogasts surround Essek Thelyss, who begins to quietly shake apart in the embrace. Outside, the leylines flare and thrash, but for a moment, the three of them hold tight and do not let go.

Notes:

Update: The wonderful shrugsinchinese has made some absolutely stunning art for this fic! Personally, I will be staring at it for the rest of time. Please check it out and leave some love for the artist!

Oh hey, new fandom! The last two years have been pretty Critical Role-centric for me, but after Echoes of the Solstice, this idea tore me away from other WIPs and wouldn’t let go. A massive thank you to my editor aceofbasedesires for sifting through this “quick one-shot” that got wildly out of hand.

Undercommon phrases are sourced from here. Title credit to Emily Dickinson’s poem of the same name.

Outside of AO3, feel free to come say hi at my CR tumblr! I’m also now on Bluesky here.