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It’s about three days after leaving Healeaks that Osvald tries to talk to Castti.
Castti is sitting on a log, and Osvald comes up behind her with all the grace and subtlety of a bear, feet heavy against the ground. She doesn’t react, her apothecaries kit spread out all around her. About fifty paces behind her, the fire hasn’t been set up yet, with Partitio trying to spark up a proper flame and Ochette watching, eyes wide. The air is warm with the sunlight. There are birds chirping, and leaves falling, and all of the absent-minded motion of nature swirling on by. The clouds in the distance are tinged a pretty coral-pink, and the sun sinks with all the steady leisure of something completely assured of its own presence the day after today, and the day after that.
It is infinitely more lively than the area around Healeaks. Castti’s eyes, Osvald notes, are far-away. Her hands are shaking.
He is no longer sure of how to deal with conversations like this.
Castti hadn’t been angry, when she remembered- she had just seemed determined, like a man walking into his grave, and told them what she had recalled clinically, like debriefing a patient. Since, she had been acting strangely- keeping odd hours, always up late and awake before anyone else, vicious when fighting and throwing herself into her research to stop Trousseau- and it was starting to concern him. More than her regular behaviors, he means.
Castti just keeps on looking forward. Behind them, there is a yelp of joy as Partitio gets the fire going and a groan of disappointment from Ochette as it flickers out. Osvald debates internally for half a second, puts a heavy hand on Castti’s shoulder, and she flinches for a second before turning to see his face. She isn’t wearing her gloves, and the purple scars on her hands are nearly luminescent in the fading daylight. She follows his eyeline and quickly pulls them on, chuckling in a clearly forced way before resuming her vigil.
She isn’t going to start this conversation. He’s never been one to back down from a challenge, even if they seem insurmountable. He just needs to break it down into smaller parts.
“…How long have you been out here, Castti?”
She jumps again- really, how out of it is she? – and sets about rearranging the various pills and herbs and powders around her feet. She smiles a little. Castti has always smiled with her eyes first, but they look just as hazy and distant as they had when she was staring blankly towards the sunset.
“Not all that long, I’m sure.” She says, lifting a bottle labelled DARKDELION POULTICE-only for use at sundown!!! and deftly putting it into another identical compartment of the bag. It isn’t written in her handwriting, far neater than her mad scrawl. There’s a little heart doodled on the bottom. Osvald thinks of a burnt-out husk where there was once a home, and the ring that used to be on his finger, and the chain around his neck. “May I ask why you’re here, Osvald?”
She really isn’t going to make this easy on him. The first step is probably to integrate himself into her environment, to make her feel safe so he can gauge whether she’d be alright with him continuing to question her. He thinks that there’s an answer, or a mirror, or something he can’t quite quantify in her face. He sincerely hopes that he’s wrong.
“I’d like to help you sort the medicines.” He says. Its true- he had always had a curiosity for the healing arts, if not one enough to push him into a field of study proper, and Castti looks tired. Any help he could give would probably be welcomed, even if he can’t tell each section of the bag apart.
She nods easily. The jumpiness from earlier seems to have faded, replaced by that curious resignment. “You are welcome to. Can you sort the harmful blends from the rest of the medicine? -that would be the ones that have a slightly thicker texture or red tint. Even if you just put them in a pile off to the side, it would be a great help.”
Osvald blinks. All the tinctures look near identical to him, and only half of them are labelled in Castti’s jittery scrawl- he doesn’t know what to do here, and pauses over the jars and vials. This is significantly different from his experiments back home (or the ones he used to do with Harvey, damn him, damn it all-). Castti looks at his face and takes pity on him.
“Maybe just sort the tools then, and I’ll do the medicine.” She says sighing. The purple bruising beneath her eyes is nearly the same shade as the scarring around her hands, and it seems as if they’re growing darker by the minute. “By size, thank you.”
Osvald starts to organize them. They are incredibly delicate under his hands- thin splints of metal and wood that could break so, so easily- and he lifts and sorts them with care. They’ve been used to stitch up everyone’s wounds once or twice, and it’s hard to believe that such small things could have such incredible power. Lives, in their wielder’s hands.
He made himself into a wraith of his former self, a ghost at an empty dinner table, and he nearly died a half-dozen times trying to get out of the prison he had been stuck in. There are no lives he has saved, only lost. He let Emerald slip through his fingers, and Elena, and Rita. A bowl of food at an inn can hold a thousand little griefs, and a night of drinking a thousand more. He remembers returning home and finding a burnt-out husk, and it still being that- home. He remembers Rita. He remembers guilt.
He sincerely hopes that Cassti isn’t doing the same. Theres no worthwhile tinder to be found in self-recrimination, and the questions of what he didn’t do never kept him going in Frigit Isle.
Osvald wants to help her- to tell her that she’s not alone, that she’s got them- but really, that’s more Partitio’s forte. He cannot trust himself not to hurt her. The words come bubbling up his throat, and he says them unsteadily.
“You can’t change the past, Castti. You can only do what you can now.” He reaches out one large hand and squeezes her shoulder. He feels like he’s said something incredibly wrong, like the balance their group is on currently has been tipped over unstoppably and its all his fault. He swallows dryly and returns to the little tools. He cannot take it back now.
She nods, eyes coming into focus, and looks to the horizon once more. The sun has fully retreated under the mountains now, and she breathes out, and turns back to him. She smiles, and it is a brittle, fragile thing.
“You’re a good man, Osvald. I hope you know that.”
With that she stands and starts to pack up her bag. Osvald quickly puts down the tools and stands up as well. He isn’t sure of how to feel about her assessment of him, but it’s nice to hear even if it isn’t true.
“I didn’t realize you had completed your sorting so soon.” He says to Castti’s back. “If I slowed you down in any way I-”
“You didn’t. I didn’t either.” Castti replies over her shoulder. Her smile has shored up into something a little firmer, and she takes two steps towards the fire. “We both must eat first, though, and I need to make sure that Partitio hasn’t burnt the onions. Come on.”
Osvald lets a genuine smile crack his face. Night has fallen, but the cold he had grown accustomed to over the past five years doesn’t follow. The fire is ahead of him, and warm, and the dawn is ahead of that.
“I am… glad you made it.” He says, only half-intentionally, and Castti freezes completely.
It feels too personal, too raw- like he’s tearing at a barely healed wound, still sore and burning with infection- but it doesn’t hurt. It feels like seeing Lady Clarrissa for the first time in years, or like having Elena take his hand to drag him through the library he already knows years before that, or like sharing a drink with the travelers a week back and having to lean on Tenemos and Throné to get back to the inn. It feels like home, while he still had it. It feels like the right thing to do.
“I am glad you made it as well.” Castti says quietly back to him. She nods, as if having come to a decision, walks the rest of the way and sits down next to Ochette at the fire. It is the first time she has eaten with the others in days.
Osvald watches for a second. The fire is bright and warm, and Partitio has not burnt the onions, no thanks to you, Ochette, and the beastling in question is chattering about a bird’s nest that she had seen in the forest earlier that day. The firelight dances around them, and he feels somehow, devoid of any rational explanation, at peace.
Osvald sighs and goes to join them. The onions aren’t going to eat themselves.