Work Text:
He has to be careful now.
He always had to, it was stupid to relax even for a moment, a day, a week. But now, now he's reminded. Starkly, painfully. He has to be careful.
Mistakes are costly. Cost seconds, spells, lives. No mistakes twice, he had lived and breathed it for years - years of mistakes disguised as righteousness. But of course, of course, he's stupid. Let himself fall again for soft words and sweet promises. For an instant, a toxic instant, he was young and in love and full of shining potential again.
His magic has never burned him.
(That's a lie, he's a filthy liar, he has the scars to prove it but he still plays pretend like he's invulnerable, like his shoulders don't ache from the beams of his own burning house crashing down, his collision with the dirt when they pulled him away).
His magic has never burned him while he was in control. And he is very, very good at keeping control. It's all he has now, this say over his own faculties. When it isn't bitterly ironic and threatening to eat him alive, he revels in freedom of thought and unbound limbs.
Now, though, now he imagines he can feel blisters bursting across his palms. Maybe it would make him feel better. Pain, at least, makes sense.
The problem - a problem, one of too many to count - is that he is useful. He has skills that no one else in this group does, has an education and an instinct for magic, and he is good at what he does. He is useful, and they are desperate and out of their depth, and so they will keep him. For now, at least, for now.
He is useful - he has to be useful, or they will leave him or kill him and he's not sure which is worse anymore. He identifies a slapdash Abyssal Anchor, sparking with unfamiliar magic that piques his curiosity despite everything. He cautions against storing it in their Bag of Holding, with his limited understanding of pocket planes and gateways. He strings his well-worn silver thread around the room and summons a dome of dimly-glowing energy so they can rest safely.
He coughs blood into his hands. He is scraped raw, beaten and bloodied, trembling with exhaustion. Caduceus sends warm divinity through all of them - even him, somehow, for some reason - and he feels weeping gashes begin to close. The pounding headache only worsens. His hands are unsteady as he finishes casting, the glyphs he traces in the air almost too unstable to hold what's left of his magic. He feels the last of his strength leave him with the final incantation. He's fine, he's fine, he's fine. He's useful. Maybe if he proves it they will keep him.
Nott ("I wrote a letter, I thought maybe...") is distracted, wrapping Clay's wounds with meagre bandages and stuttering over tearful apologies. The careful way she brushes his matted pink hair from his eyes is too much to bear. She will stay, he knows, piled with the rest. Within reach to hold or be held. Nervous and spiteful and bent but still good, still kind.
He finds a space of his own, as far as he can be without leaving the bubble and dispelling it. He wraps his decrepit coat tighter and tells himself that he's only shaking from the cold. He tells himself that it's cold. The shaking stays, the headache worsens. He hears them speaking quietly - a brief manic giggle, a pained hiss, a muffled sob.
Maybe they'll leave, maybe they'll kill him. Maybe they'll kill him, maybe they'll leave. Which is worse? He has to be careful now. Has to be useful. He's only worth keeping if he's useful, and he just proved again how broken he is so he has to fight ten times as hard to regain an inch of the miles he's lost. He's weak, preyed upon, he fell to the hissing voice and creeping pressure without a fight.
It was familiar. The excuse to let go, to be guided, to be used, was accompanied with such twisted euphoria that he still almost craves it. His fingers twist in his shirt, claw into his chest. He lost three nails gripping the stone against Fjord's crashing wave. The melodic weight of another being's will overtaking his own triggered so many instincts he thought had long died out, untouched for so long. Submission was beaten into him, once, with the same voices the creature used now. Astrid, her hands cold and eyes bright - Eodwulf, taller and broader and effortlessly joyous - (Magister Ikithon, as good as a god, power and righteousness incarnate, the guiding stars above -) -
"Light them up, pretty."
He wanted to be good. Lazy pleasure had curled in his gut - he stifles a shudder at the memory - and he had felt two thrills of satisfaction down his spine when his Fireball hit. The creature's, giddy and sadistic, and his own, so proud of his work.
Maybe they'll leave him, maybe they'll kill him. He has to be careful now. He always did. But they trusted him, they liked him, and now they've seen him for what he is (less than a monster, a pet, an attack dog, a weapon to be aimed and fired). So he has to be careful. He has to be useful. He gives them a safe place to sleep, time to recover, and hopes hopelessly that it's enough.
Eventually his anxious spiralling thoughts drag him into uneasy sleep - he jerks awake three times, each time expecting retribution. It's stupid to sleep with his back to them. He can't move any closer.
He sleeps, and dreams of fire and voices he can never forget.
-
He is without words when he wakes. It's early enough to send him over the edge, forcing his restless hands into his pockets to wrap twine around his fingers and bloody his palms, making his head buzz with static and his chest constrict. Just minutes into the day and he's already failed.
No one else is awake yet. There is time still to fix this.
("Look me in the eyes, Bren. Look at me. Do not move. Be still, Bren. Silence. Be still, look me in the eyes. What are you saying? Don't mumble, watch your tone. Speak up. Speak up. I never took you for an idiot, Bren. You are better than this, Bren. Weaknesses are to be overcome, Bren. Look me in the eyes.")
He feels eyes on him, peeling away the skin of his neck layer by layer, the paring knife of a knowing gaze flaying him alive. He bites his tongue to stop the groan rising in his chest. He wants to move. Can't move. Has to stay still. He is curled up where he slept, ragged coat tight around him. They bound him when he was restless, wrapped his arms around himself in an empty parody of an embrace. If he pretends to sleep maybe they'll look away. He needs time to fix what's wrong with him. There's so much wrong with him.
Beauregard says "We should head back up."
He dispels the bubble and alarm with a swift cut of his hands through the air. Jester watches him warily, eyes fixed on the pocket where he carries phosphorous. For a moment he cannot breathe.
"Lean on me," Yasha tells Caduceus, her voice barely above a whisper. The firbolg, still obviously exhausted, nods wearily and steadies himself between her and his staff. His Light cantrip flickers, holding but just barely.
He summons his Dancing Lights, letting Clay rest. He sees the grateful, easy smile from the corner of his eye and wraps string around his fingers until he feels them go numb.
While they walk he stays at the back - still close enough to watch, to be watched, he knows they will watch him. Fjord's eyes are heavy. Beauregard's unasked questions are heavier.
He lets them watch him. He knows he should be watched. No matter how useful he is, no matter how many skills he can offer in exchange for their time, he will always be a weapon first. And weapons, especially one so unrefined, must never be left unattended.
"I'm much better now that we're leaving," he hears Jester tell Nott with obviously forced cheer. Nugget, scorched and limping, is close to her side. Nott takes her hand.
His head is stuffed with cotton batting, the cheap rough stuff his mother would buy to fill pillows and quilts for winter. It scratches and swells, soaks up blood and stagnant water and moulds over, black spores filling his lungs like smoke. There is no space for echoes but he still hears ringing in his ears the familiar voices, the seductive purr of power and potential that he has always been so weak to.
"Keep up, dear," Mollymauk says with a laugh, spinning on their heel and sending their coat twirling around them. "It wouldn't do to lose you."
Their voice fades into the damp echoed footsteps of the party, trudging through churned muck and standing water. One foot in front of the other, don't mind the way the mud clings to your worn boots like suction or how your feet haven't felt properly dry in weeks. He's done worse, seen worse, survived worse, deserves worse. His cotton batting head is heavy on his shoulders, blood matted hair hanging lank in his face.
Jester is laughing. It's a good sound, obnoxiously loud and hopelessly infectious. There's a squawk at the end of each hiccup that sounds like the seabirds that must have circled past her window in childhood. It's a good sound. He clings to it, weak and desperate and unworthy. For a moment, the curl in his gut and static up his spine is from a much kinder satisfaction, the warm glow of having made her happy.
"Well maybe if you hadn't set me on fire -"
He forgets sometimes - stupid, stupid - that she resists ice easier than fire. She is as vulnerable as the rest.
They reach the entrance back into the well proper, and face the problem of getting back to the surface. He pushes his way through the group gingerly, each brushing moment of contact making his skin itch and peel. The clay cat's paw in his pocket is a familiar weight in his hand, worn smooth in places by his hopeless worrying. The larger stone appendage he summons from the wall to widen their exit is met with -
Does Beauregard flinch? Does Fjord's hand flex like he's summoning his weapon? Does Jester step back and Yasha step forward and Nott freeze in place?
"Good thinking," Caduceus praises. He might be sick. "Any ideas on how to get up?"
He shrugs, mute and stupid. There is merit to the phrase 'struck dumb'.
In the end, it's decided - in a background hum - that Beauregard with scale the well and let down a rope for them to climb. It's difficult and exhausting for the already worn out group, but the simple relief of being above ground is enough to soothe the worst of their pains. They begin their trek... Somewhere. They must have chosen a destination already. Perhaps it was part of the faded static that seemed so unimportant in the face of the maelstrom in his head, stupid, selfish, worthless -
"Caleb?"
He keeps walking, waiting for Caleb to answer Nott's quiet plea. Her voice trembles as badly as her hands around her unopened flask. He can't remember the last time he saw her take a proper drink.
"Caleb, please, just look at me."
This Caleb is being a real arschloch, he thinks sourly, hunching his shoulders impossibly further. He and Beauregard have been ushered into the centre of their strange pack, the two humans strange and vulnerable in this City of Beasts. He feels alien eyes on him, inescapable. He's filthy, and he wants to smear dirt across his face and through his greasy hair until he's just another piece of street trash, not worth a second glance. Beauregard is watching him strangely. Her mouth is likely pinched, her hands likely clenching at her sides as she struggles to formulate her next sentence delicately. He assumes, because he can't look at her face. He wonders if she will talk to Caleb.
"Dude," she says, her knuckles lightly brushing his shoulders. He startles, jumps halfway out of his skin, feels his rabbit pulse kick up again as cold sweat drenches his back. "I get that you're in a mood or whatever but you could at least listen."
His mouth gapes like fish. He falters and stops. The rest must notice, because they stop too, only moving enough to usher the group off to the side, finding a safe sheltered spot between two buildings.
"Is Caleb still being weird?" Jester asks, her voice a bit too loud as always. He watches her shoes as she stamps her foot impatiently. "It's fine, silly, everyone's okay! And if we weren't I'd fix it because I'm The Cleric!" She nudges Caduceus hard enough that he staggers half a step, chuckling regardless. "I am Jester, Conquerer of Unfair Explodey Deaths!"
Her voice is turning to static again by the end, as is Clay's quiet rebuttal.
A large, pale hand hovers over his wrist - he's lifted his hand to his mouth, jaw aching to bite and grind and destroy. Yasha's broad form encompasses his entire field of view. He keeps his gaze fixed on her midriff, tracing the braided cloth and the lines of her worn woven belts across her waist.
"Stop that," Yasha says, gently commanding. It settles something pacing and feral in his head. She takes his wrist slowly, holding it gently, dwarfing the fragile bones with one broad, calloused hand. "Tell us what's wrong, Caleb."
His chest is tight, like iron bands have been welded to his lungs and left to constrict as they cool. His stomach churns and his ears ring. The coppery tang of blood sits heavy on the back of his tongue.
"Caleb," he whispers hoarsely, choking on the syllables. The single word takes monumental effort; he fights to pull it from where it has submerged itself in fetid marshland, sunken like bog bodies. His hand twitches in Yasha's hold, a pointless spasm as the other digs it's nails into the meat of his palm to quell the desire to flail.
Nott makes a small, sad sound in the back of her throat, resting one small, four-fingered hand on his trembling locked knee.
"Sit him down," Beauregard says, barking it like an order. "Fjord, where's your water skin?"
He's pushed until he slides down a wall, until he meets hard-packed dirt. Sloshing leather is pressed to his chest insistently. If he drinks then the fire will go out and he'll drop dead, and he can't yet because he's not finished, not allowed. He's so thirsty. He holds the canteen in shaking hands, pressing the stitching into his palms in lieu of bitten nails. Another hand pushes it up closer to his mouth. He hears the water inside. He's so thirsty. Ash clings to his tongue, gagging him.
"...leb, Caleb, eyes up man, look at me."
("Look me in eyes, Bren.")
He obeys because he has to. Because he is good - no, that's a lie, he's a liar, he's awful but he's a well-trained mutt all the same. He meets Beauregard's steady gaze. He wants them to keep him.
"Do you know where you are?" Beau demands. He realizes she's crouching in front of him. He's leaning against something - cold, slick stone, rough even through his many layers.
He nods.
"You," he forces out, because questions must always be answered aloud. "Here."
"That's not -" she breathes out sharply through flaring nostrils. "Tell me where you are right now."
"Here," he says, because where else would he be?
She rises and spins on her heel in a startling burst of movement. He flinches, skull knocking against the stone.
He's supposed to be smart. There are consequences for failure. His pulse pounds in his ears like galloping horses, like war drums, like thunder.
"C'mere," Fjord says quietly over the roar. He nudges the water skin. "Drink, Caleb. You'll feel better."
He can't. He shouldn't. He can't. He can still see blood and bruises and shiny burns and he's a monster and a weapon and he's fine, he's useful, he can be good, just let him try again please let him try again he'll be good and maybe they'll keep him he doesn't want to leave and he doesn't want to die he'll be good -
Four fingers, knuckles wide and knobbly, nails long and thick and chipped, cradle his face and brush his hair from his eyes. They must catch in the matted grime, but they - Nott does not falter.
"Breathe," she urges. "Copy me, listen, it's alright." She breathes in even counts, five-seven-five. His breath rattles in his lungs like death. She presses his hand to her chest, lets his awful skin come so close to hers, the worn cloth of her tunic settling against the lines of his palm like aloe on burns. "Good, you're doing great, just like that my smart boy, my sweet boy..."
Between her pulse and the rhythmic brush of her fingers through his hair he feels himself relax, slumping forwards to be caught by her and - and other hands, bigger, battle-worn and hesitant, bracing his shoulders and cradling his head and easing him back to slump bonelessly against something soft and warm.
The familiar peat moss and jasmine of Caduceus's magic runs over him, more a trickling stream than the usual rolling weight. It settles in his bones, eases pains he'd forgotten were there. A rib grinds back into place. He doesn't flinch.
There is conversation above and around him, but he's exhausted. His fitful sleep beneath the well hardly restored him; if anything it only made the burning behind his eyes worse. There's a tremble in his arms that won't still even when he goes limp, sparking like static electricity down his wrists and through his fingers. He keeps his eyes open, but barely, taking in shapes and colours that refuse to resolve themselves into a full picture. Someone is angry.
"Keep breathing," Caduceus murmurs in his ear, pressing a wide hand to his side. "Do you know who we are?"
"...You," he manages to breath out. No, no, that's not good enough. He knows their names, of course he does, he's not stupid, he's mad, there's a difference. But words are beyond his grasp still, an effort he doesn't have the energy for, so he motions one hand limply towards the bickering group. "Okay."
"That'll do," Caduceus says, gathering him closer to his chest. "As long as you know you're safe."
But he's not. He has to be careful. Street mutts and firebugs are chased off with yelling and strikes and he is worse than that, he's mad. So he has to be careful. Can't be trouble. Can't be dangerous, but he'll always be dangerous, but he has to be harmless until they need him because a faulty weapon is a liability.
Jester. In front, face drawn and pale in the worst way, eyes darting across his form. He turns his hands palms-up and splays his fingers, trying to prove that he's harmless now. There's fear in her eyes, he thinks. It doesn't suit her.
"O-kay," she says, too loud and falsely enthusiastic. "So we're gonna go to the inn-stables-place, and Yasha's gonna carry you if that's okay - and you should say it's okay because you look really bad no offence - and then we're gonna sleep more because fuck the last few days, honestly. And then we're gonna talk because you'll feel better tomorrow!"
She leans back on her heels, nodding in satisfaction. She turns her attention to Clay, "You are sleeping as long as you want and then you're going to eat real food, mister, okay?" Caduceus nods agreeably.
He blinks rapidly when Beau loops an arm around his shoulders.
"C'mon," she says quietly. "Up we go, Caleb."
Oh.
Caleb.
He hears her cursing when he goes abruptly limp again, halfway to his feet. But there's smoke and breaking glass in his head and his name is Caleb.
("Look at me, Bren. Look at me.")
Oh.
He picked a name out of thin air to satisfy the seemingly temporary curiosity of a very strange goblin, and it stuck. It wasn't supposed to. No name had ever lasted more than a few days, not in so long that he'd forgotten the feeling of having one of his own.
Caleb Widogast. He is too much like Bren sometimes, stubborn and power-hungry and desperate, but he is also the things Bren was not allowed to be. Quiet, introverted, awkward. Weird. Picky and particular and a little bit cracked. A shattered doll pieced back together wrong. Loyal, not to a cause or a greater power but to people.
Dangerous, but not wanting to be. Caleb was - is - allowed to want to be docile, sometimes. To want to be gentle, even if he's bad at it. To try and fail at something he hesitates to call love.
He buries his face in Beauregard's shoulder.
"You," he says fiercely, desperate to make her understand. "You."
Her grip on him tightens.
"Yeah," she replies, looking around at the rest as they form a barrier around them. "Yeah, Caleb. Us."