Chapter Text
The cottage is very small.
Not compared to a ship’s quarters—it’s luxurious by those standards, with its kitchen and bathroom and bedroom all connected to a sitting room whose wide windows overlook the sea. But it’s small compared to, say, a house in Nicodranas, or a manse in Rosohna, or a nine-story wizard’s tower in its own dimension.
Jester doesn’t mind. It’s a beautiful cottage. The architecture and furnishings are an odd mix of Nicodrani and Zemnian aesthetic—odd because it works, surprisingly, the bright geometric patterns of the Menagerie Coast complementing the sturdy and simple wooden beams and lintels of the northern Empire. There are curtains fluttering in the windows and flowers growing in planters beneath the sills. The bed is covered with a homemade quilt. In the kitchen, the cupboards are full of flour, sugar, cinnamon and herbs, and there is butter and milk and eggs in the icebox—perfect for baking. An easel rests beside the bay window of the sitting room, where canvas and paints and brushes have been arranged. She sees a leash and collar hanging on the wall beside the door, for a dog, perhaps. The air smells like lavender.
It is as if this place has been made for her, she thinks as she wanders slowly through the cottage. And yet there are other things that don’t quite fit. The bookshelves hold a few romance novels, but mostly titles she’s not interested in: arcane treatises, spellbooks, lengthy historical tomes. There is a huge fireplace built into the wall opposite the bay window, far bigger than any Jester ever had need for back home, with knick-knacks she has never seen before strewn across the shelf above it: small carved wooden animals, a delicate glass vase, a pot of basil, a single china plate displayed beside a matching teapot, a child’s stuffed doll, an old hat. The table in the kitchen is covered not only in flour stains and unwashed dishes but in ink stains and untidied papers. And on the floor beside the front door is a scratching post made of driftwood and rope.
Jester stares at the scratching post, thinking hard. Okay, so whoever lives here has a pet, she thinks, filing the thought away for later, and moves on. As she explores the cottage—smiling at the knick-knacks littering the shelves, at the open books covering what must be every available surface, at the huge windows that look out over the sea and make her fingers itch to begin painting again—she wonders when exactly she can expect the owners of this place to come back and find her here. The last thing she remembers—she closes her eyes and shudders. The last thing she remembers is pain, and cloying fear, and an overwhelming sense of disappointment in herself.
Right.
She isn't going to think about that now, isn't going to probe at the memories until they make sense, because she isn't sure she will like what she finds. Somehow, improbable as it might be, she has ended up safe, and warm, and in a house that seems built to welcome her in. Perhaps this is where Leygar is from, or maybe Darri and Tystan scouted it out for her. Or perhaps, she thinks suddenly, seeing the carving of the open door and the path beyond that embellishes the doorframe in the kitchen, she has an even older friend to thank for bringing her here.
Almost without thinking, out of habit, she murmurs, "Traveler?" Her voice comes out rough and unused; the word falls out into the silence, unanswered, and she has to pinch her forearm tightly to stop any disappointment from registering.
A breeze is blowing in through the open window, salt and spray, and it’s suddenly unwelcome. Jester shivers and checks the back of the cottage. Another door leads out away from the sea, towards—she frowns—towards a sloping green valley blooming with wildflowers. And is…?
Yes, there is a figure there. A man. He’s crouching in the grass, examining something, when he catches sight of Jester and stands up.
All the air seems to go out of Jester's lungs as she gasps, hands flying to cover her mouth. No. Impossible, wonderful, magical—
She's smiling already as she runs, bare feet scraping over the shingles and pebbles but she doesn't care, her hair catching and snapping in the wind—
"Cayleb, oh my god it's good to see you—what are you even doing here, did you like tele-kidnap me or something, I don't care, actually, just—come here—" And she throws her arms around him, pressing her face into the sun-warmed material of his coat.
He goes still, and breathless, and when his arms eventually do come up around her they’re weak and hesitant. Too soon he pulls away, takes a step backward, stares at her.
Impossible, his face reads. Impossible. Unbelievable. Untrue.
And then a smile begins, faint at the corners of his mouth. Wonder and joy warm his gaze.
"…You are so young," he whispers, and he reaches up to take a curl of her hair between finger and thumb.
"Oh gee, thanks, Caleb, it's good to see you too," Jester pouts, her eyes dancing. She doesn't feel young, she feels like it's been decades since she saw him—which, technically, it hasn't, she just…hasn't been great at making it back to the Empire super regularly, is all. Seeing him standing in front of her, though, his coat smelling faintly of wood smoke and spilled ink, his fingers gentle against the shell of her ear as he tucks her hair behind it, Jester feels it all at once, how long it has been.
His smile grows. For a moment, his lips parted, it looks like he’s going to speak—but then his eyes fill with sudden tears. He swallows hard and cups Jester’s cheek with his hand.
"I missed you," is what he finally chokes out.
Jester's own smile fades, and she brings one hand up to cover Caleb's. He's not happy, why is he not happy, and her mind is already whirring through the possibilities and how she might fix them—someone's hurt, or someone's left him, or someone has done something shitty to the Academy—
Or maybe it's that someone forgot to visit for too long, her heart whispers, and she feels guilt flood through her.
"I'm sorry," she forces out, her voice rising almost into a squeak. "I know I suck at visiting."
Caleb lets out a hoarse laugh. "No. You have—" He takes both of her hands in his. "You have nothing to apologize for."
A seagull cries out in the distance, and Caleb lifts his gaze towards the rise where the cottage overlooks the beach.
"You came from up there?" When Jester nods, he asks, "Will you show me?"
"Um, yeah, sure," Jester agrees, a little confused. "It's your place, right? I saw the cat stuff— oh my god Cayleb did you get a new cat—?" She’s already pulling him up towards the house, eager to get to know it better, eager for him to show her all around. Her confusion shifts to the back burner as she lets excitement carry her back up along the pebbled path.
Caleb is silent, letting her narrate their way up the slope until they reach the back door of the cottage. Then, pausing only to gaze at Jester for a long moment with an unreadable expression on his face, he steps inside.
His footsteps creak lightly on the wooden floor. The lavender smell greets him and Jester as they slowly round the corner into the sitting room.
"Oh…" Caleb approaches the fireplace and reaches up, lifting a carved fox from the mantel as carefully and gently as if it were a newborn baby. "I…I have not seen you in…" He exhales. "So long. I had forgotten about these, Jester."
Jester rounds on him, planting her hands on her hips. "How long were you out in the sun for, Caleb?" she asks, injecting some forced levity into her tone, because he is really starting to freak her out.
He smiles. "My father made these," he says softly, holding the fox closer for Jester to see. "One every birthday, until I left home. See, he helped me carve my initials on the back."
He turns the fox around, and sure enough, scratched clumsily into the wood are the letters B.A.E.
"When I got older I pretended it embarrassed me," he murmurs. "But I treasured every one."
Jester steps closer and runs one finger carefully down the length of the fox's nose. "It's perfect," she whispers, smiling a little. "Did you...you know, get these from the past? Or, or, or recreate them from memory? They're really good, Cayleb."
"Jester," he says softly.
Something in his tone makes her breath catch.
"Look around. Look at yourself." He gestures towards the bedroom doorway, at the mirror she can see hanging on the wall inside. "What is the last thing you can remember?"
Jester feels her mouth go dry as she looks at herself—as she looks at them— in the mirror. Caleb was right: she does look younger, her hair bright blue and curling softly around her horns, her cheeks rosy, the lines around her eyes and nose rubbed away as if someone's taken a huge eraser to her face and wiped away the years. Decades.
And Caleb— Caleb. Why is it only striking her just now that he ought to be in his seventies, in his eighties maybe? She stares at his youthful face, the dimple on his clean-shaven chin more pronounced than she's seen it in a long time, his hair clean and healthy and tied back in the old ponytail he used to sport before he started wearing it shorter. His coat is...Unless she's very much mistaken, it's a perfect replica (though less worn out, and much cleaner) of the coat she saw him in first, his sleeves pushed up and his forearms bare.
Jester is dreaming. She has to be dreaming, she must be asleep in...in...
What is the last thing she can remember?
"I don't know," she says quietly, her voice dropping to a whisper; she feels suddenly cold, and has to fight the urge to curl her arms protectively around herself. "I don't know."
Caleb sets the fox back on the mantelpiece and moves to stand behind Jester. His hands come up to rest lightly on her upper arms, and his smile above her shoulder is soft.
"We look like when we met," he murmurs, meeting her eyes in the mirror. "Look at you. I think this is even before the magic cheekbones."
Jester smiles instinctively, her mouth curving up and two dimples appearing in her cheeks; he's right.
"Holy shit, Caleb." She lifts one hand up to cover his on her shoulder. "Your butt chin's back."
"I had not realized it ever went away," he chuckles.
They watch themselves reflected there in the glass for a few more moments before Caleb steps around to face Jester, still keeping his hand beneath hers.
"Jester," he asks gently, "do you remember your fiftieth birthday?"
"My fiftieth..." Jester wrinkles her nose. "Um, I think so?" She doesn't know why he's asking or where he's trying to lead her. Still, she trusts him, and he seems okay with being here right now; so she's okay with it, too, she decides.
"And your sixtieth?"
Jester thinks, hard. She had stopped celebrating her birthdays, if she's honest; she hadn't had a reason to. But sixty is a big deal, she must remember it, right?
A sudden memory surfaces, and she finds herself smiling. I didn't know where to send a present, so I thought learning this would be an okay substitute. I'm sure you’re having a wild party— and then, seconds later, while she was still doubled over laughing, rolled into a bedroll in a stable in Port Zoon, trying not to wake the others— Scheisse, twenty-five words is not a lot, we shouldn't have given you so much shit. Happy birthday, Jester. Doot doo doo doo doo. Doot doot.
"Did you learn Sending?" she asks, her smile soft, the memory of raucous laughter echoing in her voice.
Caleb smiles back, the corners of his eyes crinkling ever so slightly. "Ja, I did," he murmurs. "But…Jester…"
His hand on her shoulder tightens just a bit.
"Do you remember your seventieth birthday?" he asks, and his voice has gone very quiet, and very sad, and very old.
Instinctively Jester tightens her grip on his hand. "You're sad," she frowns. "Why are you sad? You know I'm not seventy yet, Mr. Keen Mind I Know How Many Seconds It’s Been Since Sunrise."
"You never turned seventy." His other hand comes up to stroke the back of his knuckle against Jester’s cheek, barely a feather-light touch. "Jester. You died. I think…I think we are both…"
Sudden revulsion twists her stomach. "You’re not dead," she blurts out, and the words in her voice sound like a laugh, even though they really, really aren’t. Caleb dead? Impossible, no, it can’t be, he can’t—"Caleb, this isn’t funny, I’d know if you—if you—"
She chokes on the words and falls silent.
"Well." His voice is still barely more than a whisper. "Maybe not. Maybe this is…a dream, a vision of some sort. A spell, perhaps." He glances at their surroundings again. "Though which one of us is the dreamer…"
He drops his hands and moves to the window, staring out at the ocean. The breeze ruffles his hair and his coat, just a bit.
"The last thing I remember," she hears him say, "is lying in bed, with Veth and Essek and Beauregard around me…and Luc and his Leopold, and…" He hesitates. "And Caduceus. He was promising me something. I can’t remember what."
"Well now I know you're bullshitting," Jester spits, suddenly angry. "If you were..." The words freeze in her throat again. She spins around, away from the fucking mirror, away from Caleb, away from all the ways in which this house can't be. "I would be there, wouldn't I. So you must be bullshitting."
Caleb glances back at her over his shoulder. "You were not there," he says softly.
Jester won't look at him. There's an emptiness opening up inside her, a yawning, nameless horror, and she won't look at it. She won't. "Bullshit," she mutters.
The corner of his mouth lifts. "It doesn’t really matter," he murmurs. "I am…grateful for the chance to see you, Jester. To hear your voice again. No matter the explanation."
Jester tosses her head impatiently, and she can't help but marvel at how easy the movements feel, how light—
She falters, her frustration fading.
"So it's a dream," she mumbles, her voice full of uncertainty. "That's what you think?"
Caleb leaves the window to approach her again. "I don’t care what it is. I am not going to argue with it, or try to puzzle it out. I won’t risk it unraveling."
"Not gonna pull at the mystery? Are you sure you're Caleb Widogast?" Jester forces a teasing levity into her words and onto her lips. She closes the distance between them, drinking him in: he’s so young, he must be no older than his early thirties, and his blue eyes are very bright and very fixed on her face.
Slowly, she lets her hands rise up to his shoulders, her fingers digging in a little tighter than she intended.
"Okay," she murmurs, and finds she means it: if this is a dream, one surefire way to risk waking up is to think more about how dreamlike it is. "Yeah. Okay."
"Is it okay if I hug you?" Caleb asks hoarsely.
Instead of answering, Jester launches herself forward, wrapping her arms tightly around the back of Caleb's neck and burying her face in his shoulder.
This time it’s a proper hug. He pulls her close, his arms strong and sure around her waist and back, and she feels his breath stutter against her ear as he presses a shaky kiss to her hair.
They hold each other for a long time.
*
There’s a porch swing outside, built for two, unadorned save for a threadbare cushion spread across the seat.
"Mein Gott," murmurs Caleb as he and Jester emerge from the front door. He lets go of her hand—and when did that happen, holding hands?—to run his fingertips across the weathered wood of the swing’s backrest. "This belonged to my parents. I helped make the cushion there, it was our gift for my mother."
A grin spreads across Jester’s face. "You made the cushion? Cayleb, that's so cute, oh my god..." She inspects the cushion, tracing her fingertips over the stitches that are made all the more precious by knowing whose hands held the needle, whose youthful eagerness made the thread run a little lopsided along the edges. "I didn't even know you could sew!"
He laughs. "It was a long time ago. And it, ah, did not hold up so well…" He lifts one corner of the cushion to reveal wool stuffing spilling out through a ripped seam.
"Please," Jester laughs, "you should have seen some of the terrible clay pots I made Mama for her birthdays. This cushion's looking pretty good, Caleb."
"Well, if you are happy with it." He smiles and takes her hand again, and they sit down together, the swing groaning slightly under their weight.
It’s strange, looking out at a beach that’s so familiar but so empty of people, at a harbor that Jester knows so well but where there’s neither dock nor ship nor fishing boat to be seen. The water stretches out until it meets the sky in an unbroken line. The waves whisper and the seagulls cry, but there are no other sounds except for the gentle creak of the porch swing.
"Your children were doing well, last I heard," Caleb murmurs after a long silence. "Both happy and healthy. You—" He turns to glance at her, his gaze soft. "You have a grandchild."
For a second, Jester doesn't register his words; she just keeps watching the water lap onto the sand in small, regular, reliable waves. And then her throat seizes up.
Grandchild.
"I—" She pulls her hand away, clutches her neck, tries to rub some feeling back into her suddenly frozen chest. "I have a—"
She stares at Caleb, eyes wide again, panic rising in her like a swift tide.
"I really died?" she asks finally, feeling her eyes well up with tears.
"I was told it was quick," Caleb whispers. "That you…probably felt no pain." He clears his throat. "I, um. I asked Caduceus to…try to bring you back, but…"
Numbly, Jester feels him take her hand again, feels the steady, reassuring warmth of his fingers. There's a shadow of a memory beginning to surface, and it's dark and pain and heat and blood—and she doesn't—she can't look at it yet—
"I guess he said it wasn't in the Wildmother's plans for me, huh." She laughs hollowly.
Caleb is silent.
"…You didn’t…answer," he finally murmurs. "We called, but you…"
"...Oh." Jester feels very small. Tears are running down both cheeks now, but she can't summon the energy to wipe them. "Oh, Caleb, I'm sorry."
"It was your time." He leans over and presses a kiss to her hair. "You were ready. I cannot blame you for that. Not now that I know how it feels."
Jester leans into him and takes a shaky breath. She still can't seem to do anything about the tears, or the sobs shaking her shoulders, but Caleb's cheek is resting against her hair, and she can feel his hand gently tracing circles and spirals over her back.
"Tell me stuff," she whispers after a while. She still can't raise her head, so her voice comes out a little muffled. "What happened. What'd I miss."
"Well, her name is Genevieve," Caleb breathes into her hair. "Do you want to guess whose she is?"
Jester tries to speak, tries to think— Ettie with her hair coming loose from her braids, rolling over and over down a hill behind their house, Max bent over a wooden workbench, his hands covered in paint and glue, oh, god—
"I will give you a hint," whispers Caleb. "Her mother and father call her Jessie."
The thoughts fall through Jester in heaving sobs, one after the other—Mignonette Lavorre, who cropped her hair short and said she was Ettie Stone when she was twelve years old, who spent her infancy at the beach and her childhood messing around on boats, who roamed and loved with the ferocity of the blue-green ocean that Jester saw reflected in her colouring every day—
"Ettie," she sniffs, her voice ragged, worn. Caleb's arm tightens slightly around her side, pulling her into an awkward, sideways embrace that grounds her just enough to get the words out. "Am I right?"
"Mhmm." His breath ruffles her hair. "She is…nearly six now, I think. She is wonderful, Jester, you would be so proud."
"Fuck," Jester whispers, finally raising her head and wiping fiercely at her cheeks with one hand. "That's...Thank you, Caleb."
"For—?…Never mind." He releases her and fishes a handkerchief out of one of his coat pockets. "Here. Dry your tears, it is not so bad, ja? They are all safe. They mourn you, but they still have the lives that you helped them build." Her hair has fallen into her face again, and he gently tucks it back behind her ears and horns so that she can blow her nose. "And your funeral was pretty great, Lavorre, as far as funerals go."
"Well, good," she manages with a hoarse and unsteady laugh, pressing the handkerchief to her eyes and turning away slightly so Caleb won’t see how badly her lips are still trembling. "I hope you were all super sad and got real drunk. Like, blackout drunk. Like, made out with Veth and woke up in Tal'Dorei drunk."
"I actually woke up in Hupperdook," murmurs Caleb. "Didn’t make out with Veth, though. I don’t think."
Jester laughs again, snorting a little into the handkerchief. "That sounds like a pretty great party," she says thickly, blowing her nose one more time. Gods, is she ever going to stop crying?
"There were fireworks over the harbor. Your mother sang. And—"
There are tears in Caleb’s voice now.
"Your, um. Your father pulled some strings. Put the word out. So many people came, Jester, hundreds of them, all people you helped or saved, whose lives you touched, from all over the world. There were even a few villagers from Rumblecusp. And the Bright Queen was there, too, believe it or not. To honor a hero, she said."
"Hero," Jester scoffs, looking back out over the sea. If she squints, the tears caught in her lashes refract the sunlight into sparkles, almost like fireworks over the horizon. "Maybe once upon a time."
"Every single day of your life," Caleb counters fiercely.
"We were heroes," she says quietly, resolute. "The Mighty Nein. After that...I don't know."
"I think the people who came to say their farewells that day would tell a different story. They were not just people you met with us, Jester. And…"
Caleb stares out at the waves.
"Heroism can take…unexpected forms," he murmurs. "It is not always slinging spells and fighting evil. It can be…" He swallows. "Loving someone back to life. Making someone laugh in their darkness. Guiding others along the path to healing. You did all of those things, Jester, every day that I knew you."
"Did, um…" Jester begins thickly, too close to sobbing again to argue with his stupid, kind, wonderful words. She wants to know, though. She has to know. "I guess you didn't see Artagan, though."
Now he smiles again. "Who do you think gave your eulogy?"
She wheels around to face him, eyes wide. "Shut up, no he didn't."
"He did. It was very moving. Only a few dick jokes."
Jester snorts, and then once again lifts the handkerchief up to wipe her nose. "Eugh, I'm sorry, Caleb, this is pretty gross now," she mumbles, scrunching it up into a ball in her fist. "It's a really nice handkerchief, though."
"Not to worry, I always keep a pocket full of them. Luc’s children are fond of sticky sweets."
As he says this, his stomach gurgles audibly. He and Jester share a weak chuckle.
"Well. Whether this is a dream or something else, apparently we still need to eat. Do you want to go inside?"
At the mention of Luc's children, Jester's heart gives another squeeze; but she nods, and takes Caleb's hand when he offers it. "Sure, yeah," she says, quieter now. "I think I need to drink, like, a lot of water or something."
There is water in the kitchen, cool and refreshing from the tap—which looks identical to the tap above the sink in the Lavish Chateau’s downstairs bar. Caleb finds food in the pantry: bread, honey, apples. A round yellow cheese rests on a shelf in the ice box, and he takes that too, arranging everything on a tray with plates and silverware as Jester takes a few minutes to recover her composure.
They eat slowly, in companionable silence. There seems to be little to say, now that they have gotten some of the important stuff out of the way—or at least there’s little that either of them is ready to say. Jester feels Caleb’s gaze on her face almost constantly, as if he’s still marveling at seeing her again after so long (how long? she wonders), or as if he’s afraid that if he looks away for more than a moment or two, she might disappear. But he asks no questions, tells her nothing of himself.
Outside, the sun begins to sink. The warm air grows a little cooler.
"That is Blumenthal, behind us, I think," Caleb finally speaks up. "I recognize the flowers. Forget-me-nots, my—" He clears his throat. "My mother’s favorite. And—" He nods toward the front door. "This beach, that is where you brought us the first time we visited your home, ja?"
"Yeah," Jester murmurs, glancing out the window. "It's...magical. I don't mean like a spell or something—well, I don't know, it could still be? But it feels..." She turns in her chair, looks out at the field studded with Caleb's mother's favourite wildflowers. "It feels magical."
"You have not been home in a long time," Caleb murmurs, his eyes fixed on her face.
Jester shakes her head mutely as her gaze is pulled back out towards the beach. Strange, how she could have ever convinced herself that she'd never liked the ocean, when her childhood...her home had been here, had been the wide, open sky, the cool water, the hot sand. "Not in years," she says quietly. "Too long."
He reaches across the table and covers her hand with his own. "Well. You are home now."
It’s not true, really, for…so many reasons, all of them complicated and overwhelming and cruel, but…
Jester squeezes his hands and smiles, soft and sad. "Yeah."
*
There is only one bed.
Caleb takes in this information, standing still in the doorway for just a moment, before he seems to accept it and just starts undressing. His coat comes off first, and he lays it carefully over the back of an armchair; then he unbuttons his shirt, and Jester catches a glimpse of a familiar pendant around his neck, glinting red in the light from the candle on the bedside table.
She pauses midway through slowly untying her shoes. "Hey," she murmurs. "That’s…" She squints. "You’re dressed like you were when we first met, but that’s… I wore that necklace. It’s Mama’s ruby."
"What? I—oh." His fingers still and he looks down at his chest, then blushes. "Ah, this—ja, your mother, she gave it to me, after you…"
A beat.
"Do you want it back?" Caleb reaches up and starts unclasping the chain behind his neck. "It was a reminder of you, but here you are, so…"
"No!" Jester's hands fly out, almost instinctively—she suddenly wants very much to stop him from taking it off. "No, keep it," she says emphatically, and adds, "Please."
"Danke," he says softly. "It is very…Thank you."
He turns and finishes undressing until he’s bare to the waist. A quick look in the wardrobe reveals some simple sleep clothes, just a cotton shirt and loose trousers. Caleb takes these and steps around the corner to change.
Jester smiles to herself as she finishes taking off her boots, then begins undoing the buttons down the side of her dress. She'd missed this dress, she realises: the simplicity of it, snug enough to fit under scale mail but sturdy enough to handle a hard day's walk on a mud road, plain enough to escape notice in most situations but pretty enough to feel like her, or at least the person she used to be. It slips off easily too, and Jester can't help but stare at her younger body in the mirror, at the soft curves, the smooth skin, the lean muscles shaping her stomach, her thighs. In the wardrobe that looks more Jesterish, with pink swirls and lollipops embossed into the top, she finds a plain nightdress in pale blue and pulls it over her head.
"Okay, Cayleb," she calls, feeling a sudden wave of nervousness wash over her and immediately pushing it to one side, raising her voice and injecting a teasing, joking tone into her words. "You can come back in, I promise I'm not completely naked!"
He comes back around the corner with a soft smile on his face. "It would not be anything I haven’t seen before. You used to lose all your inhibitions in the presence of a hot tub, if I recall."
"Well, obviously, there are no rules when there's a hot tub," Jester laughs, and then stops, feeling suddenly foolish. "Um. I woke up in here, earlier, but you..." She glances around the room, unsure of what she's asking.
"Would it bother you?" Caleb approaches the bed and sits down. "We have slept in closer quarters before. There was barely any breathing room in the dome, some nights."
"No!" Warmth blooms across Jester's chest, and she follows Caleb to sit on the other side of the bed. "I didn't know what you, like…if there was some other room you woke up in, or something, but I was going to ask you to—" She feels her cheeks flush, and looks away. "To stay, anyway."
He lies down, pulling the quilt over him and holding it up so that Jester can get underneath on her side of the bed. Then he stays there, facing her, his expression carefully blank.
Feeling his eyes on her, Jester turns to face Caleb, watching the moonlight glow on his pale, unreadable expression. "What are you thinking?" she whispers, without quite knowing what is making her lower her voice.
There’s a long pause before he whispers back, "I’m terrified to sleep."
Oh. Oh. Terror clutches at Jester's throat, and she reaches out on instinct to find Caleb's hand, to slide her fingers between his. "You said you didn't think it was a dream, though."
His other hand comes up to stroke her cheek.
"I thought of you, when I…" He swallows. "When I went. I was thinking of you."
The room is very quiet. Nothing moves but the flicker of the candlelight and Caleb’s thumb grazing Jester’s cheekbone, back and forth.
"What if this is just…synapses firing?" he whispers. "What if you are not real? This could all be nothing but chemicals and electricity, one last gasp…"
"I'm right here," Jester says, with a stubborn slant to her lips. "I'm not chemicals, don't say that, we're both here."
A hint of a smile crosses his lips. "That is what you would say, though."
Jester huffs, frustrated. "Well, sure, but..."
She trails off, and finds she can't argue with him.
Caleb locks eyes with her. Something shifts in his gaze, a strength and determination that she has seen before, but only on those rare occasions when he forgot to guard it and it came shining out: when Veth fell in the middle of a battle, when he faced down his most hated enemy over a dinner table, when he clasped her hand and congratulated her on her marriage.
"Promise me that you will be here in the morning," he says. "Swear it."
"Promise," Jester replies quietly, squeezing his hand tightly in hers; tired and worn-out as she is, she finds she doesn't want to look away from him. "I swear it, on..." She pauses, considering which deity might be the safest bet here, and suddenly remembers a story the Traveler told her years ago, of temples uncovered, of redemption lost and found. "On the Everlight," she says firmly. "I'm not going anywhere."
She leans the side of her head against his palm, feeling the callused fingertips pressing against her cheekbones. With a rising horror that tastes like bile, it occurs to her that Caleb’s theory could be true, in reverse: she could be the one trapped in her last few seconds of life, surrounded by blood and fear and no friends, no family—it could be her mind that has conjured up this cozy fantasy, complete with stories of an epic funeral where everyone showed up, of a family that misses her.
"You too," she hastens to add, squashing the thought down as deeply as it will go. "Swear you won't disappear on me, Caleb."
He touches his forehead to hers. "I swear it," he whispers, "with all my heart."
The candlelight eventually sputters out, and darkness fills the room. And still they stay there, not moving, hardly breathing, praying that there will be a morning.
to be continued