Chapter Text
Caleb didn’t know why he had come.
It had been nearly a year, though the time felt simultaneously endless and like nothing at all.
Molly had been dead for five times longer than Caleb had even known him, and yet… and yet, here he was.
The grave was easy enough to find, burned, as it was, into Caleb’s mind. The wind was lashing against the hillside, though blessedly, the rain had petered out around noon.
Molly’s coat was bedraggled, but still there. It had blown from its perch, caught amongst the gorse a few yards away. The year in the elements had done it no favours, but Caleb suspected it was magically fixable, if not salvageable in the traditional way.
Caleb stooped to retrieve it, and as his fingers brushed the fabric, the tight feeling that had been caught in his throat for the last few hours broke free. Caleb’s eyes burned as he stuffed the coat as far down into his pack as he could.
He returned to the grave.
Caduceus’s word had been true. Clumps of thick heather and bracken had sprouted over the spot, and Caleb had no doubt that given enough years, the area would be impenetrable with shrubs.
And Caleb didn’t know why he had come.
“I…” he started, feeling unutterably foolish, “we did what we set out to do. Or… Scheiße.” He ran his hand over his face. “So much has happened I don’t even remember what you were present for.”
He raised his face to the sky, as if he were trying to find some meaning in the heavy clouds. Predictably, there were no answers there.
“I wanted,” he said, quietly, “to thank you. The path I have taken, I cannot help but feel that it was you who set me on it. Afterall, you… carved yourself out of the remnants of a man who was not… not-”
His throat tightened again, and he swallowed painfully.
“You would have been proud, I think. Of all of us. Of Yasha. I wish… Scheiße, what am I saying.”
His eyes overflowed, and Caleb let them. Mollymauk deserved the tears.
It occurred to Caleb that there were few who had cried for him. Their group had, of course, shed bitter tears. Gustav perhaps had said his goodbyes privately. But beyond that, with his death Mollymauk had sunk back into the ground he had come from with few to mourn him.
His short life was inconsequential, save for the few who had had their lives touched by the memory of a bright tiefling with a shrewd smile and magic in his blood.
It wasn’t fair.
“I cannot help but…” Caleb rubbed the back of his hand against his nose. “I don’t wish, any longer, that our places were exchanged, but… You didn’t have the time…”
His voice broke, and he knew he would never finish the sentence. It was too raw, and too close to too many truths, for him. Too many wrongs that he could never, ever put right.
The wind was his only answer, whipping against the tear-streaks on his face. Like it was mocking him.
“He wasn’t done.” Caleb’s hand closed in a fist. “You hear me? He was not done! It wasn’t enough!”
Caleb wasn’t sure who he was yelling at. The Moonweaver, who Molly had given himself to, to no avail. The Wildmother, who had loved Caduceus so much more.
Perhaps the Goddess of Death herself.
“You gave me my second chance! A third! Fourth! Why not him? He deserved…”
The wind picked up, lashing against him. Dragging at his coat, and his hair. Rising to meet his blasphemy. And Caleb didn’t care, couldn’t care, as he whipped up the indignation around himself like it would shield him from the wrath of the Gods.
He dropped to his knees, unable or unwilling to stand against it any more.
“Let him come back. Please. It is not fair. He left everywhere better. He left everyone better.”
The wind cracked, carrying on it, once again, the hint of rain.
“Please,” Caleb said, just a breath of sound.
Why had he come?
What purpose was there in this senseless penitence?
Except to prove to himself that there had been a Mollymauk Tealeaf, and meeting him, along with their little band, had changed Caleb’s life. Had saved Caleb’s life. And in this little way, he had mattered. He had mattered to them.
“You let so many come back. So many, with powerful friends, with wealthy families. Any who can pay the cost of a spell. And he wasn’t anyone. He wasn’t important. But he was important to us."
There was no answer.
“I have known so many,” Caleb said, his voice almost spent, “who care only for power and ambition. Who stamp and consume and burn their way through this world. And perhaps it is true that you cannot mete out death to those who deserve it. But you can grant life. I have seen it. I have seen it.”
Caleb let his hands drop. He had nothing else to say.
Mollymauk had lived. And he had been kind. And it was not enough.
But when had kindness ever been enough?
Mollymauk had lived, and he was gone. And there was nothing Caleb could do to fix it.
Not now, anymore than a year ago.
He had known that before he had ever set out on the pointless, Gottverlassen trek.
The rain was beginning to soak down the back of his coat again. Icy tendrils snaking into the wool sweater he was wearing beneath. The sky was darkening, the thin glow of Catha was just visible through the clouds.
The moon would not be bright tonight, but it should cast just enough light for Caleb to navigate. He would not go far, just a little way away from this cursed fucking hillside. Then he would cast his tower. It would not do to tempt fate, and leave himself open to bandits on the road in the darkness.
Even as he thought it, the low clouds broke a little, and a pale shaft of moonlight illuminated the heather and gorse around him in a silver haze. The drizzle was so fine that it appeared to almost hang in the air.
It was beautiful, Caleb supposed, if it had been on any, any other hillside.
“Perhaps this is your apology,” Caleb said, to the moon, more than a little sarcasm edging into his tone.
Perhaps he should think himself lucky, if the favour of the Moonweaver stretched far enough to spare him a twisted ankle from a rabbit hole concealed by darkness, or an ambush by cutthroats.
He pushed himself to his feet. Lingering would do no good.
He stepped up to the marker that was not enough, but all that he had been able to do. He should say his goodbye, again, but he couldn’t seem to bring himself to. He had come all this way, and for what?
For what?
He stood there for so long, hand resting on the marker, that he began to hear a soft shuffling in the underbrush. Some small creature taking advantage of Caduceus’s blessing. A dormouse, perhaps, or a small bird, startled by Caleb’s arrival.
He caught movement at his feet, a shifting of the heather, and he stood absolutely still to see if he could catch a glimpse.
What he saw sent a sick coil of dread into his gut.
A hand. Grey taloned nails, chipped and ragged. Emerging from dirt. Thin grasping fingers about to curl around his ankle.
All of his insides plummeted, as shivery static seized his muscles and he threw himself backwards. He overbalanced, thudded back into the ground. Half-crawling, half-toppling his way through the brush. Gorse-fingers grabbing and catching at his coat.
He couldn’t take his eyes from the hand. From those long fingers snatching at the air.
He couldn’t move.
A second hand emerged, scrabbling, and then in a burst of earth, the dead thing tore itself from the grave.
Still trapped from the chest down, it threw its head back, arching its neck in a rattling gasp. A spray of soil burst from its throat. A snatched, desperate breath misted the air.
It choked, chest heaving, and, suffocating on the dirt in its lungs, turned its huge desperate eyes on Caleb.
That awful sick dread shot through him again as the nightmare thing in front of him coalesced into something that struck him with even more horror.
“Molly?”
The thing, Molly, his friend , convulsed, trying to draw in air. He wheezed out another spatter of wet dirt. His scrabbling hands seemed to grow weaker.
Caleb could suddenly feel his limbs again. He threw himself up, breaking the tangle of gorse he’d been caught in. He scrambled up the hillside and threw his arms around Molly’s chest, hauling him up from the gravedirt. Sharp, terrified hands clutched onto his shoulders, and Caleb was reminded of the way a drowning man might sink his rescuer in his desperation.
But Molly was not drowning, and Caleb would die himself before he let him plunge back into the grave.
With a final burst of near-spent energy from both of them, Molly flung himself out of the soil, toppling them both over with the force. They tumbled down the hillside, rolling until Molly extricated himself from Caleb’s grip, and threw himself away to skid to a stop around ten feet away.
Caleb was breathing hard. “Mollymauk,” he gasped. “Molly?"
Molly was breathing raggedly, crouched on all fours, tail lashing like an angry cat.
No longer death-grey, but flushed with the flow of new blood.
Alive .
Thin tremors were running over his skin. His hair was dew-damp and his shirt was clinging wetly across his shoulders. It had been raining for days before, and the hills weren’t known for their clement weather. The soil must be drenched. Molly was sodden, and cold.
Tieflings ran hot, Jester notwithstanding. Mollymauk did, certainly. Caleb could still feel the ghost of heat against his skin from Molly’s lips from all those months ago.
Caleb dropped into his own crouch. “Mollymauk?”
Molly didn’t move. Only his eyes darted restlessly.
It struck Caleb where he’d seen it before. Cornered animals, attention held taught, looking for the moment to bolt.
Molly’s trembling looked only partially caused by the cold. Fear, confusion and adrenaline were also playing their part.
More than that, Caleb recalled reading that a return from the dead was taxing on the body. Fatigue and exhaustion. Without food and rest it would not resolve. And with the added strain of the cold, of stress and overexertion, Molly was likely to get sick.
Caleb knew all of that intimately. Knew too the… wretchedness , of a mind torn by confusion and disarray.
A painful-looking shiver ran down the length of Molly’s limbs, and Caleb raised a hand. To cast prestidigitation only, to dry his sodden clothes, but to Mollymauk, as to a kicked dog, it seemed, a raised hand was a raised hand.
He bolted.
“Scheiße,” Caleb said under his breath, as the cantrip swelled and failed to catch on empty air. “Mollymauk, please!”
Caleb couldn’t let him hurt himself.
Caleb raised his hand again without thinking, drawing the thin iron rod out of his pocket. He cast. Mollymauk gave a yelp, before collapsing to the side.
“Scheiße!” Caleb said, again. As he realised what he had done instinctively.
Hold person.
Effective… Not gentle.
But then, when had he ever been gentle?
He pushed himself to his feet, and crossed the few yards over to Molly. Molly’s eyes were wide. If he had been human, Caleb would bet that he would be able to see the entire ring of white. Molly was still trembling a little, this time from the force he was using to try to break out of the paralysis.
Caleb sighed, hard. He was fucking this all up.
Molly was a person. A person. Not a kicked dog, or a stray cat, or an enemy. He was Caleb’s friend . He deserved better than to be chased and corralled and frightened.
Caleb knew better.
“I’m sorry, my friend.”
He sank back into a crouch, and then changed his mind, and sat back, crossing his legs neatly in front of him. A position he couldn’t easily spring from. Far enough away that he clearly couldn’t make a grab for Molly.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, as he began to slip his coat off. “I do not know if you can understand me right now. But I do not mean you any harm. I’m going to release you in a moment. I hope that you will not run, but if you do, you have my word that I will not chase you.”
Caleb folded the coat in his hands and leaned forward to place it within Molly’s grasp. Then he released the spell.
Molly spasmed suddenly as his muscles relaxed. He rolled, on all fours again in a heartbeat, but he did not run. His eyes roamed over Caleb, taking in everything, his position, the coat on the grass.
And the moment stretched out.
Slowly, ever so slowly he sat back. Caleb didn’t know whether it was his display of calm that had convinced him, or whether Molly had, correctly, put together that he was unlikely to be able to escape a caster through athletic skill.
Molly had always been sharp, and something in the calculated way he was assessing told Caleb that he had lost none of his quick wit now he was not gripped with panic.
Another tremor washed across him, and very cautiously, Molly reached out for the coat on the grass, watching carefully for Caleb’s reaction. Caleb just nodded. “Ja, es ist kalt.”
Molly pulled it on, still ever so cautious. It was… incongruous. Molly, with his bright skin, and bright eyes, swaddled in the dark coat, but now was not the time for wishing for what had been.
“That is warmer,” Caleb said, just to fill the silence. “But I imagine the wind still bites, ja?”
Even with the thick wool Caleb was wearing, he could feel the icy chill after the loss of his coat. The thin damp shirt Molly was wearing would do little but wick the heat from his flesh.
Molly was just watching.
“If you’ll come with me, I’ll make us some shelter. It will be much more comfortable.”
It occurred to him that he could just cast the tower here, but he had little desire to rest within sight of the empty grave. He imagined it may do Molly some good to be away from it too.
He pushed himself to his feet, careful to avoid looming too much, and then offered a hand. Molly eyed it hesitantly, and then his fingers closed around Caleb’s. The jagged remnants of his pointed nails dug sharply into Caleb’s hand, but he felt real and solid, and for the first time, it struck Caleb exactly what he’d done.
Mollymauk was alive. Caleb had called to the gods, and they had answered. And Molly was here and breathing.
Caleb pulled him gently to his feet. “That’s good, my friend. Come, let us get warm.”
And, he thought but did not say, let me work out what in all the nine hells, I have done.