Work Text:
'I have a surprise for you,' Caleb's sending says, in what is possibly the least reassuring sentence Essek has heard all week.
More precisely, Caleb's voice, unfamiliar in his head where he expects Jester, says "good morning, Essek. Please come to the Port Damali Cobalt Soul at your earliest convenience. I have a surprise for you. I'll see you soon."
He is forcing himself through the process of making tea-- already unremarkable leaves gone stale after what he assumes is an extended shipping process up to Uthodurn are making him uncomfortably aware of how spoiled he's been. He sets the kettle carefully on the table beside the woodstove, and takes a deliberate breath. The way his heart has started pounding simply at Caleb's voice is far more telling than he's ready to acknowledge.
"Caleb, this is a... cryptic message. I can be there within the hour if this is urgent, but perhaps a bit more explanation would be appreciated."
Caleb responds almost immediately. "Don't tell anyone where you are going. This won't make for a pleasant day, but the outcome will be... better than anything we have hoped for."
Essek knows how much Caleb Widogast loves the Empire. He knows the sacrifices he has made and will continue to make for it.
He doesn't even bother to finish his tea before he leaves.
While he has the teleportation circles for all of the Cobalt Soul branches Caleb has visited meticulously copied down, he has yet to actually use one. He disguises himself as a precaution, though he's not sure what good it will do if he is walking into a trap. The Cobalt Soul as an international NGO is lauded for remaining neutral in its pursuit of Truth, but he has seen the reports of Dwendalian Soul monks actively working against Xhorhas, so his faith in the protection of the institution, even outside of the Empire, is lacking. He ensures all of the wards around his rooms are in place before he leaves, and draws the curtains. The Bright Queen has been remarkably patient with him over the past eight months, allowing his sudden relocation to Eiselcross, his research trip to Aeor with Caleb, and now this brief hiatus in Uthodurn, but that does not mean she does not have people watching him.
He has been careful not to give the impression that the fight with Lucien has left him shaken and in need of time away, which means that is exactly what the Queen is reading into his actions. On his worse days, he thinks it is not even a lie. He is aware he grew up privileged, that no number of years crushed beneath his mother's disdain, interrogations overseen in the Dungeon of Penance, tasteful assassinations carried out to protect his den, can compare to the sheer physicality of fighting for one's life in inhospitable terrain with no alternatives. He is certain he is being permitted this respite so that the Lens has time to recall all of the agents he is aware of and adjust any operations he has been a part of. As young and as prominent as he is, the past year has not been kind to his reputation, and he is uninterested in putting forth the work that would be required to attempt to preserve his station.
The discovery of his treason will come at some point, it is inevitable, and he would prefer to be as far away and as harmless as possible when it does. His mother has already given up messaging him. Verin sends word when he can, but the necessity of an intermediary makes the correspondence bland and distant. The queen messages him with some regularity, but he is sure that once she realizes there is not enough of her pet project to be worth recovering she will give up.
Masking himself into something unremarkable stings his pride, but there are days, weeks on end where he feels too exhausted or too numb to care. Some of the injuries he sustained in Aeor, while healed skillfully and fully, leave him with aches and unexpected weaknesses that linger unpredictably. It is not uncommon that his brief responses to Jester's daily sending's are the only words he speaks aloud each day, and he often finds himself too restless to calm his mind for trance but too tired to do anything else. His trances, when they happen, find him circling around memories of Jester falling to Lucien, of Caleb doing the same, of his father's final words. Sometimes he replays all of the information they had collected in Aeor, or cycles through his private research on the beacons, over and over and over again until a noise on the street jerks him back to full consciousness. Somehow it is these nights that linger more than the replay of his friends' deaths, leaving him unsettled and with the feeling of being watched.
Caleb embraces him the moment he arrives. Essek freezes for a few seconds, body and mind caught between the instinctive defensive reaction to unexpected contact and the sheer relief and joy that is the familiar smell of ink and woodsmoke. Caleb steps back quickly, before Essek can return the embrace, but he keeps a hand on Essek's shoulder.
"Thank you," he says, voice shaky. "Essek. I am so glad you came."
"Are you going to turn me in?" Essek asks.
Caleb flinches, presses his lips together. "No," he says. "Essek. I would not."
Essek touches his forearm lightly. "I know that sometimes we must do things for our country we regret. I would not blame you."
"Give me a bit more credit than that," Caleb says. "I am capable of growth, contrary to what my childhood trauma might imply."
"I wasn't just talking about you." Essek had hardly intended to keep what he learned about the beacons a secret.
"Come, come," Caleb says, sliding his hand down from Essek's shoulder to link their fingers. "Beauregard is here, too. We can explain."
----------
Caleb is correct. It is not a pleasant day. The head of the Port Damali Cobalt Soul seems very competent, and is respectful and kind with Caleb and Beau to a degree that Essek has not often seen. But they still sit across the table from him while he, under a Zone of Truth, provides a complete and detailed summary of his interactions with the Cerberus Assembly. Beau and Caleb are not permitted to be in the room with him, and for all of their reassurances he is keenly aware that he is signing his death warrant, should anyone care to use it. By the end of the session he feels sick and humiliated and painfully just as naive as many in Court have accused him of being.
Caleb assures him that his testimony will only be used as one of a series of axes left hovering over Ludinus Da'leth's neck in the coming months. With de Rogna dead and Ikithon very publicly imprisoned, Da'leth is already in a delicate position.
"He knows that to expose what he did you would also be exposing yourself, and while Da'leth's station would afford him some protections from Dwendal's wrath, you would be dead within the day. The King holds no love for war and even less for the Dynasty. You are at a bit of a stalemate, which is why we need a way to prevent Da'leth from simply outsourcing your death to the nearest sellswords or mercenary. This testimony, among other things, is that assurance."
Essek frowns. "The Assembly doesn't like loose ends."
"They like scandal and investigation even less," Caleb assures him. "It means that we cannot get Da'leth removed yet--as soon as Dwendal hears a rumour that he was responsible for the war, we lose our leverage. I want him in the cell next to Trent, but you can only destabilize a centuries old institution with significant power over government so much before people start very kindly pointing spears at your throat. This alone would not be enough to get him thrown into prison, but as much as he may claim it, he was not unaware of what Trent was doing. Astrid knows things, as well, and she has been speaking with Uludan. We have plans. They may only protect you for our lifetimes, but perhaps in 40 years you will have found friends who you can rely on in the long-term."
"That is vague, given I am to stake my life on it."
Caleb places his hands on the table and when he speaks his words are even and firm. "Yes, it is."
Essek bows his head. "Fair."
*
Returning to Rosohna is terrifying. Yasha accompanies him, because they are trying not to risk any sort of international incident, but the humans refuse to let him go alone. He teleports directly to his towers, gathers as many of his belongings as he can fit into his chest, and as much of the platinum he keeps in cash (not nearly as much as he should have, in retrospect).
"If I am not out within the hour, assume I have either been executed on the spot or forced into conversation with my mother," he says a block away from the Bastion. Yasha grips the hilt of her sword.
"Is that... possible?"
"That was a joke," he says, swallowing down bile. "It would reflect far too poorly on the queen to accuse me in person, or keep any record of my actions or the consequences thereof. And without airtight proof, accusing me runs the risk of creating a severe insult to my den. I am unsure what the exact process would be, but given... given that I am not consecuted, they could keep it all very private."
"Wait," says Yasha. "But I thought you said--"
"I'll message you!" Essek says, brightly, and increases the speed of his float up to the gates.
Court is not in session, which is a blessing and a curse. Treason aside, there is nothing stopping the Queen from killing him on the spot to clean up the loose ends of his official resignation. He is almost tempted to bring his mother in on the conversation, but the thought of a rapid death is preferable than dealing with her in this situation.
The conversation, when he tries to reflect on it later, is blurry and surreal. He knows that it happens, that the Queen is disappointed and disapproving but ultimately unsurprised. That she warns him with a severity unusual even for her that should he share his knowledge of dunamancy outside of the Dynasty, his life and the reputation of his den will be forfeit. He knows that she congratulates him, only mildly condescending, on his "relationship" with Caleb. He remembers that she does not make mention of the stolen beacons. He does not remember the words spoken, the order of topics, any of the specifics.
"Magic or anxiety," he tells Yasha, as they share a bag of salted insects on their way to the Xhorhaus. "Neither explanation is comfortable, but nor are they unexpected."
"Memory is weird," Yasha says softly. "Magic makes it weirder."
"She will have me watched, of course, but I am very good at my former job, and quite frankly I don't intend to do anything that would warrant being... removed. I was only Shadowhand for a short time, comparatively, and while I may be frustrated with my country I do not wish to see it come to harm."
"Won't the Empire want you to tell them secrets if you live there?" Yasha asks.
"Likely," says Essek. "I am... going to be in a very uncomfortable position, but my hope is that the Assembly can shield me, through a combination of Master Bek's good will and Da'leth's fear. Other than that, I'll emphasize that any functioning government will, uh, change the wards on the castle, so to speak, when someone with significant knowledge of the inner workings leaves that position."
Essek also has a suspicion that the knowledge he has is different than the knowledge he had that morning, but he doesn't particularly want to think about that. It is much later in the afternoon than his internal clock thinks it should be.
"Won't the Queen just kill you if they ever find out about what you did? That would probably make her pretty mad."
"Partly that falls under Caleb's... plan. I am to be seen with the more recognizable members of the Nein, so that my death would not go unremarked upon. He thinks that should I be assassinated he could make it a political incident, but I have my doubts. I do, however, know that if the Queen has me assassinated she would have to justify it, which would result in admitting that one of those at her side had succeeded in betraying her and her country, as well as shaming my den. Quite frankly, I am banking on being too much trouble to kill based on revenge alone. It is... the best I have. It may come that once I am found out I will need to vanish, rely on disguises. But it is not my first choice. I saw how distressing it was for Veth to exist in the wrong body, and I would not wish to live in such a state if it is at all avoidable." He does not say that he has spent long enough swallowing potions to ensure what he sees in the mirror is correct. Part of him thinks he is being selfish, that he deserves all the suffering that befalls him, but the more logical part knows that his own personal suffering will benefit no one but himself.
Yasha continues walking silently for a moment, then carefully reaches out to touch his shoulder. "I'm proud of you. And sorry. I think we rubbed off on you. Bravery to the point of stupidity is kind of our thing. I was like you were, before-- Before Molly. But he showed me how empowering it is to... be brave. To be yourself. How not to run away, even when you're scared, even when everything is too much. Lucien was like that too, just... in terrible ways. And Kingsley will be."
"Well," says Essek. "Thank you, for the pride and the apology both."
Yasha brings a hand to her mouth awkwardly. "Do you know what this means?" She traces a finger down the black ink that cuts from her bottom lip down her chin.
"Yes," Essek says. "There has been enough cultural overlap or bleed-through historically, between our peoples."
"If you ever want to," Yasha says. "I don't know how to tattoo, but Jester does."
Essek dips his head in polite thanks. To take pride in abandoning one's den to the point of wearing a symbol of such on one's face feels repellant on a fundamental level, but he does not wish to insult her kindness.
*
Caleb's Rexxentrum house is traditional and charming and cozy. These are the words Essek uses when he finds himself thinking 'pedestrian' and 'humble' and 'generic'. The street is narrow and cramped, and Essek is absolutely certain he could not retrace the winding path they took to get from the Cobalt Soul to Caleb's house. It is not as cold as Uthodurn, but the slight wind carries a damp sort of bite that is unfamiliar. The sky is overcast, which is pleasant but does no favours for the architecture. The walls lean in, suffocating and dull against the greys of the sky and the browns and greys of stone and dirty, well-trodden snow.
Essek had remained huddled down in his cloak, trailing half a step behind Caleb, face ducked into his collar against wind and curious stares alike. Beau and Caleb have told him he should be able to move through the city safe from targeted attack, but Essek knows how humans are treated in Rosohna and he can't imagine drow receive any better in the Empire's capital. He understands the need for Caleb and Beau to make their homes here, but he would have very much preferred to visit them in a smaller, less patriotic city.
"The Academy is paying for the house for now," Caleb explains, closing the door behind them. "I... do not like that, but I also like having a roof over my head. I am collecting a salary, but I still do not feel secure enough in my position that I will turn down the ability to save up money for an emergency."
Out of the public eye, Essek lifts off the ground even before bending to unlace his boots. He trails after Caleb through the sitting room and down the hall to the kitchen. There are books stacked on the countertop, the narrow wooden table, and both chairs. A wooden box of neatly-organized cloth bags of tea perches precariously on top of the woodstove, and a mostly empty bottle of wine sticks awkwardly out of the clearly-unused icebox.
Herbs hang in bundles in the window, presumedly for components, the curtains tied back with knit scarves. The space somehow manages to be fully infused with Caleb while remaining distressingly impersonal. Having passed through his own towers and the Xhorhaus in the past days, the indefinable lack of comfort is stark.
He resists the urge to wrap his arms around himself. The wind and damp snow have been left outside, yet the chill remains. Caleb leans down, flicking a spark from his fingertips to catch the half-burned logs in the stove. Behind them, a cat enters the room silently and pauses in the doorway to stare at Essek, ears back and tail arched. He meets its gaze politely, but it remains perfectly still.
"You spent months in Uthodurn and didn't buy a new winter coat?" Caleb asks. Essek startles.
"Uhh," he says, intelligently. His last winter coat had been one of the final victims in their Aeorian exploration, left under the ice along with its fallen comrades -- Essek's fiction that his floating is purely affectation, six years of Caleb's hopes and dreams, an embarrassing number of healing potions, etc.
"We will get you one tomorrow," Caleb says.
"It won't be that much of a concern," Essek says. "I... don't want to impose on your kindness for too long. And I can't imagine I will be going out that often in the time I am here."
Caleb glances away, tugging at the end of his scarf. It is new, unfrayed and even without touching it it looks incredibly soft. He looks different in this city. Elegant and distant and there is something in his eyes that makes Essek think of the hypervigilence Jester has described in Caleb before they had met.
"Well," Caleb says, carefully, "You are obviously free to go wherever you wish, and I won't lie and say that Rexxentrum is safe for you by any means. But that being said, I want you to know that you are more than welcome here for as long as you would like to stay. I mean that, Essek. I will not tire of your company. And on the more pragmatic side of things, it may do you well to be seen publicly with Beau and Yasha and I for a few weeks. We are not household names, obviously, but those involved deeply with the King or the Assembly know who we are, and know what we have done. And what we are doing. I would like it to be politically inconvenient for you to be, uhh, thrown under a bridge, as it were."
"You've said as much," Essek says. "That goes against... everything I have been doing for the past... four years."
Caleb reaches out a hand to rest it on Essek's forearm. It burns hot against his icy skin, in the most embarrassing moment of fanciful symbolism he has allowed himself in years. "I understand. And it has kept you alive, for which I am endlessly grateful. But things have changed. The shadows are no longer the safest place for you, if you'll excuse the pun."
"I won't," Essek says automatically.
"I have a very comfortable reading chair," says Caleb, then immediately drops his face into his hands.
"I see?" says Essek, eyebrows creeping up. The tips of Caleb's little ears are going oddly red.
"Elves trance," Caleb says into his palms. "I assume you don't always float."
"That's true," Essek mutters. Sitting on the frozen ground in Aeor had seemed counter-productive, and there had still been a part of him wanting to show off. Caleb had provided him a variety of soft surfaces to rest in his tower room, which is a whole other emotional landmine he is not prepared to touch, but they have never rested together aside from the surreal, fragmented time at the Blooming Grove. Essek does not remember if he'd floated to trance. He doesn't remember if he tranced or slept or ate, he remembers tears and flowers and tea and fire, and then walking away feeling sick and alone-- he's not sure where that memory fits, because he had teleported to the outpost straight from the Clays' home. Everything after Lucien's defeat is a surreal, dream-like blur, interspersed by moments of hyper-reality-- explaining where the tea came from to Kingsley; realizing that Ikithon had lit the house on fire and being frozen by the sudden white cold shock of truly considering what being burned alive would feel like; Jester pressing a pair of rose printed gloves into his hands.
"I am trying to say that there is space for you here, and I want you to be comfortable," Caleb says. "I just had to make it weird."
The fire in the stove crackles into full life, and Essek moves closer eager to soak up the heat. He has not truly been warm since he went to the north. "I will stay, if that is what you wish," he says, because he doesn't have anywhere else to go and it is suddenly very jarring, like losing concentration on his floating.
Caleb drops his hands and his smile is sudden and bright. "I'm glad."
*
It's a month before Caleb comes downstairs in the middle of the night to find Essek lying on his back on the thick woollen rug in front of the fading embers of the hearth, staring up at the timbers of the ceiling and drifting in and out of almost-sleep. He has given up on trancing. Any time he tries he is startled out of meditation by the feeling of being watched. It is always a cat.
He does not know what his place is, in relation to the cats.
He thinks he is exhausted, but he's not entirely sure. All of his limbs ache dully, somehow in a way new and unique from the usual pain. He cannot focus on anything, none of his projects or books. His head is foggy-- again, in a way new and unfamiliar. He does not like that he can categorize the many different ways he is falling apart. He had thought that once he had resigned, things would be better. Different. Once he was no longer alone, he had dreamed of freedom, of a new well of energy and time in which to pursue the research and the work he has never truly been able to dedicate himself to. Instead, he reads Caleb's terrible romance novels and wanders the house aimlessly and lies on the floor feeling sorry for himself in the middle of the night.
He hears Caleb's footsteps on the stairs, stumbling a little, and thinks that he should move before he is seen in this embarrassing position. Caleb turns toward the kitchen, and Essek hears the gurgle of the water jug, the clatter of a mug being set on the counter. One of the cats meows loudly, clearly thinking that Caleb's presence out of bed indicates meal time. Caleb shushes the cat softly, and his footsteps come back down the hall. Essek hopes he will return upstairs without entering the sitting room, but he also knows what Caleb Widogast is like. He will always care more for others than he does for himself, and he will always hold the quiet fear that those he loves will be taken away from him. So it is not a surprise when he hears Caleb stop in the doorway, watches his shadow drift up the wall. Essek should turn to acknowledge him, but there is a childish part of him that hopes he can mimic trance convincingly enough to be left alone.
"What are you doing down there, Thelyss?" Caleb asks, but his tone is bemusedly affectionate, like he is speaking to one of his cats.
"Resting," says Essek. "As you should be. Are you alright?"
Caleb huffs out a breath. "I burned my parents to death. I am never going to be alright, but tonight I was just thirsty. I could ask the same of you."
"You could," Essek agrees. "But it is three o'clock in the morning."
"1:54," Caleb corrects him. "Surely that can't be comfortable."
"It's fine," says Essek. "The fire is warm."
"The fire does not even deserve the name at this point," Caleb says, stepping closer. "We have no shortage of wood, if you are cold please feel free to keep it burning as much as you need."
"It is fine," Essek says again. He wants Caleb to go away and he wants Caleb to stay and it is making him petulant and ill-tempered.
Caleb comes closer and crouches down beside him, knees cracking alarmingly. Before Essek knows what he is doing, the human's hand darts out and rests against his forehead. Essek is pushing up against it like a cat before he's even aware he's doing it.
"I think you are getting sick," Caleb informs him, still sounding fond, but now with a slight undercurrent of concern.
"I'm not," Essek says. He cannot remember being caught by a common illness once in his entire life. Even as a child, it was as if the universe had felt guilty for striking him down so decisively so young, and had held off on anything else in apology.
"I'm not sure what is normal for drow, but you're hotter than usual," Caleb says, and then chuckles a bit. "And as we all know, you are usually very hot."
"Just because you aren't wrong doesn't mean I despise you all any less," Essek says darkly. "I'm quite well, please don't concern yourself."
Caleb rises, takes a few steps backward then stops. "No," he says. "No, we are both being ridiculous, and I have to be up in five hours to attend a staff meeting. Come upstairs, my bed is big enough to share."
"I am well, Caleb," Essek says again. "I... don't even know why I'm down here, honestly. I'm sorry that my silliness worried you." He sits up and rolls to his feet in one easy motion, and then he keeps on going over sideways and finds himself half lying against the settee, sucking in air as the entire room seems to dip and sway around him.
"Vorsicht," Caleb says, startled and sharp. Essek sucks in air and clutches at the polished wood arm of the settee. Sweat breaks out across the back of his neck, and he is suddenly far too hot, struck by an unwell feeling that he can't quantify.
Caleb's face moves into his eyeline, and Essek focuses on the pressure of Caleb's hand on his shoulder, sliding around to the back of his neck.
"Essek," Caleb says, sharply. "Are you alright? Look at me."
"I'm... not... I didn't hit my head, don't fear. I simply... stumbled."
"You do not have to protect yourself here," Caleb says, casually snapping apart Essek's ribcage to wrap a hand around his heart, dripping and exposed.
"I... a moment, please," he says, because he does not know what to do. He needs time. He needs to be alone, needs to consider this situation and create an appropriate set of reactions to best navigate it. He does not have time. He just has Caleb's hand, warm and heavy, his face that exposes such open concern without shame. It is... gratifying. Essek knows he is not subtle when it comes to Caleb. Essek is horrifically, blisteringly aware that he trails Caleb with his soul offered up on open hands should Caleb ever have need of it. It is something he has grown used to, if not comfortable with. To see Caleb's emotions so blatantly on display is reassuring, every time. He knows Caleb has learned to hide these sorts of things through necessity and experience, knows of the defensive secrecy of his schoolmates, the self-sabotaging Caleb put himself through for Fjord and Mollymauk and Jester. It is not Caleb's fault that Essek has never felt like this before and is utterly unprepared for any of it. But it is still a reassurance to know that Caleb feels something. Whatever that may be.
"This is ridiculous," Caleb says firmly. "Come upstairs. You need not trance, but at least do me the favour of knowing you have not fainted and cracked your head open while I'm sleeping."
He uses his grip on Essek's nape to encourage him upright. No one since his mother and brother when he was very young has taken such entitled liberties with Essek's person the way Caleb does, thoughtlessly and naturally. There is something shamefully, secretly thrilling to feel so possessed, so wanted and cared for, even as he is fully aware that is simply how the Nein operate. Essek stands and when Caleb tucks him against his side he does not resist.
Caleb waves a hand absently to snuff out the fire, and makes a soft tsking noise to coax whichever cats might be loitering to follow. Essek allows the excuse of his illness to forgo his floating or density cantrips, leans his weight against the human and is only a little surprised when he is able to bear it easily.
Caleb's bedroom is filled with books stacked against the walls and on the window ledge and on the floor of the closet. The bed is narrow and simply made, components spread in careful, deliberate rows on the low table beside it. The faded curtains are drawn, though the chill still creeps in through the glass of the window.
"Lie down, please," Caleb says, pushing him gently onto the bed. The mattress is thin, but it is softer than the floor. Essek presses himself uncertainly against the wall, trying to take up as little space as possible. His head has started to ache, and his stomach disapproves of the movement. He wants to squirm out of his trousers and overshirt, but to do so in Caleb's bed is unimaginably inappropriate. He tips his face against the pillow instead, aware that Caleb cannot see him, and breathes deeply, digging his fingers into the blanket under him.
"Do you need anything?" Caleb asks. "Water?"
"I don't need anything, thank you," Essek says politely. The incongruity of his courtesy and his current location strikes him and he feels as if he is going to crawl out of his own skin. How has his life come to this?
He knows what happens next. Caleb does not hesitate, does not treat his next action with the gravitas Essek feels it deserves. He simply lies down. His back cracks and pops, and the mattress rustles, he exhales a soft sigh as he settles with his whole side pressed up against Essek. If this were anyone besides Caleb, Essek would think him unaware of the cultural significance of sharing a bed. To a drow, beds serve only one purpose after childhood, and it is not resting. To trance near another is common and hardly a sign of any particular intimacy, but to lie together in a bed, even if the intent is innocent, makes Essek feel terribly exposed and awkward. It's not something he's ever done. He has had offers, has, when younger, made offers of his own because it had seemed the politically advantageous thing to do, but they have never come to anything and he has never felt any regret. There had been a girl around his age from den Kryn who his mother had thought a suitable match and who had not made him feel uncomfortable and superior the way the rest of his peers did during adolescence. They had held hands and traded courting gifts and it had not been unpleasant, but he hadn't missed her when she'd chosen to complete a field study in the north and broke off their courtship. Much later, just before becoming Shadowhand, Essek had spent an evening in a charmingly acidic verbal fencing match with a professor from the Marble Tomes, drifting along in his wake from the evening's gala to a private gathering at the man's home, a mix of alcohol and intellectual stimulation bolstering his confidence. He thinks he would have slept with him had a sending from his mother not interrupted his evening, thinks he could have stayed until everyone else was gone, let that man share his bitter herbal cigarettes over the latest treatise on temporal manipulation, let him kiss whisky off his lips and press him into fine silk sheets. Could have woken the next morning either young and ashamed in the cold realities of sobriety or content and trading casual flirtation over coffee. Either way, he would have never seen that man again. Either way, he still cannot bring himself to imagine the actual mechanics of the point between kissing and waking up.
He is imagining them now.
Caleb pulls the quilt up over them both, actually reaching over top of Essek to ensure it's tucked around him securely. Essek burrows down into the warmth, and only realizes in hindsight that in doing so he has pushed himself closer to Caleb, forehead shoving into the not-silk of his nightshirt not unlike one of the cats demanding attention. Caleb huffs softly, his shoulder shaking slightly. He shifts, and then Essek's face is pressed not against his shoulder but his chest, and he has tossed one wiry arm easily across Essek's side, hand resting warm against his back. He tucks his other arm up between them, and Essek ducks his head down to lean his cheek against the exposed forearm in hopes that the night air has cooled his skin. He can't tell if his face is hot from embarrassment or illness or something else entirely.
"Try to sleep," Caleb says. Essek can feel his voice vibrating his chest.
"Elves don't sleep," he says.
"Try anyway," Caleb suggests, fondly. Essek is going to expire right here. He has not touched another living being in such an intimate and extended way for as long as he can remember. Perhaps when the clerics had lifted him out of bed as a child to attempt to avoid unavoidable atrophy. Perhaps when Verin had been very young and still sought comfort after his night terrors. Perhaps he has never experienced this, and that is why he feels like he can barely breathe, and like all of his blood has become electrified and his soul is drifting just above his actual body.
----
He wants to say he wakes in the morning feeling safe and refreshed and cozy. Feeling cared for. Feeling, even, uncertain if the previous night had been real. None of these things are true. He wakes at an indeterminate time in the future from dreams of repeating the Luxon doctrine he'd learned as a child over and over again, to a room still dim thanks to drawn curtains, and a pounding in his head surpassed only by a concussion he'd gotten in Aeor. His clothes are stuck to his skin, damp and sticky under the blankets, and his entire body aches like he has fallen from a great height. His mouth is desert dry, and when he licks his lips he tastes the metallic tang of blood, even though when he touches a finger to his mouth it does not come away stained. Caleb is absent, and for a brief, melodramatic moment, Essek fears that he will die here alone and unheard while the rest of the world goes about its day. The moment passes quickly, of course, and he rolls onto his back to indulge in a good session of feeling sorry for himself and utterly offended that his own body should dare succumb to a common illness.
Caleb has left a note, which Essek doesn't notice until he manages to sit up on the edge of the bed, pausing while the world rights itself and he can catch his breath. The note is written in careful, awkward Undercommon, which is so painfully endearing and flattering that Essek can't help but fold the paper and tuck it away in his wristpocket.
'Essek, stay resting. I have traveled to Veth and Yeza for potions, because you are ill. I will come back by noon. The tea and coffee are in the kitchen, do not fall. Yours, Caleb.' There is a basic sketch of a cat on the other side of the paper, with tiny hearts for eyes. Even in his current state, Essek has to press his hands against his face to contain the delight at Caleb's charming, silly little kindnesses.
He makes it downstairs without much difficulty-- what skills with navigating an uncooperative body he had not learned over the past forty years of existing he picked up fighting for his life in Aeor. He boils the kettle and adds the honey that has been pointedly left beside his mug to his tea. He makes it to a chair in the sitting room with his cup and a blanket, and decides he has probably earned a very long rest. He's almost expecting to fall asleep again, but the sleep he has already gotten, aside from being embarrassing and a little disconcerting, has also left him just awake enough to ensure he cannot drift off to make the time go faster. The pain in his head makes focusing on a book difficult, and his body seems unable to decide if it is freezing cold or overheating at any given moment.
Caleb returns eventually, teleporting directly into the kitchen and swearing as whatever he's carrying clatters. Essek thinks he could get up without dizziness by now, but the magic for his floating feels uncomfortably elusive, and he does not want Caleb to see him clinging to the walls just to get around.
"Oh!" Caleb says, when he comes into the room a moment later. "You're up." Essek realizes he probably should have called out a greeting, if nothing else.
"I am," he says. "How is Veth?"
Caleb waves a hand. "Fine, fine." It's a lie, but Essek doesn't press him for details that are none of his concern.
Caleb crosses the room and before Essek realizes what he's doing he's pressed the back of his hand against his forehead. Essek leans into it, Caleb, who usually runs hot, is clearly still cool from the air outside, and the touch is soothing.
"I brought potions for you," Caleb says. "I'm afraid there's no healing potion that will cure a common illness, but I have ginger and mint for your stomach, and willow bark for your headache, and something to help your sleep if you need it tonight."
Essek ducks his head. He supposes he had known Caleb's trip to Nicodranas had been on his behalf, but to hear it said so plainly creates some odd coalescence of shame and pleasure at being cared for. None of the things Caleb has listed are vital for his continued wellbeing. They are all... indulgences. Things to make his next few days that bit more pleasant.
...He hopes it's only his next few days.
"How long does this sort of thing usually last?" he asks, a little nervous, a little suspicious.
"If it is just a flu, as I suspect, no more than a week," Caleb says. "If you get worse, or it lasts longer, we may have bigger problems. But Caduceus will be happy to perform a Restoration, if it comes to that."
And if that doesn't work, Essek thinks, he has been living on borrowed time anyway. When he had first become ill is a child, everyone had still assumed that he was a returning soul. No one had been particularly concerned, beyond the inconvenience. Essek had hardly been the only child struck down by the same disease, and he knows he was one of the lucky ones, as much as it may not feel that way on days when he is exhausted simply by the knowledge that he cannot walk across the room unaided.
Aeor had been a lot in a number of ways, including making him more conscious of his impairment than he has been since floating became expected of him. Seeing Dagon's casual ease and confidence both with the chair that so clearly signified why he needed it and also in pursuing the dangerous life of a guide in the north had brought to light feelings he had never really considered. Not once did Essek get the impression Dagon was doing the work out of some need to prove himself, or an excess of bravery. He simply knew he was well suited and highly skilled, and conducted himself accordingly. Days later, Essek's feet had been firmly on the ground under Lucien's anti-magic effects, and his own hubris had slapped him in the face. He had been sick with fear that he would slow the party down, become a burden or a liability. It had not come to that, but the entire incident has remained in the back of his head, something to worry at when he can't find rest.
"I'm going to make soup," Caleb says, and Essek does not say a word to object.
The sickness takes five endless days to pass, during which he is temperamental and listless and weak as a kitten, and during which he spends each night and some mornings in Caleb's bed. Once he begins to feel better he suggests it is time he returns downstairs, and Caleb just shrugs a little.
"If that is what you want. But I think we've proven the bed is big enough for two of us."
Essek isn't quite sure how to take that, but more nights than not he finds himself tucked between the wall and Caleb's warm body. He sleeps-- not every night the way he did when ill, but more than he has ever done as an adult. In sleep, he is not expected to control his mind, so being unable to stop considering his research on the beacons is far less unsettling than when it happens during trance. Other nights he reads quietly while Caleb sleeps, clutching at the simple contentment greedily. Each dark winter morning Caleb slips out of bed silently, stamping into warm socks to defend against the icy floorboards, and Essek wakes just enough to roll into the warm spot left behind. Caleb whispers morning greetings to the cats, pokes his head over the stair rail to snap a fire into life downstairs, and sets out his bag to catalogue his components and books and papers. And then, before dressing or making coffee and oatmeal or lighting the lamps, Caleb comes back over to the bed and leans down to tuck the blankets in around Essek to make sure none of the cold air can get in.
It is four months, thick blankets traded for light cotton and dim morning light creeping around the curtains, before he finishes this ritual with a kiss to Essek's forehead.
*
Essek does not go out often. He disguises himself at least half the time, because he does not want to be murdered by an angry mob in a dark alley, but in proximity to Caleb's home he remains himself, part defiant, part pragmatic. Better to know who might try to burn down the house right off the bat. He receives a great many dark stares, a few more confused looks, and every now and then he is ignored or acknowledged politely. He meets Keona while buying components in disguise, because as soon as he walks into her shop he feels his magic flicker and fade. He staggers against the doorframe as his density returns to normal, and scrambles to pull the hood of his new coat over his ears.
"Apologies," a voice says. "Security measures, you understand. I assure you I am only laughing at you a little bit."
Essek looks up at the woman. Her half-hag features should not be a relief, and yet in this city he finds himself eager to connect. "Charming," he bites out.
"Assembly policy," she says. "They want to know who purchases magical items throughout the city."
"How unsurprisingly invasive of them," says Essek. He is going to straighten up any second now. It is spectacularly lucky that he appears to be the only customer in the shop.
"Wait a moment," she says, and spins around, trailing long fingers across a wrack of gleaming items that he's fairly sure are made of bone. She returns within thirty seconds holding a long piece of bone, easily almost four feet high. She offers it to him.
"That is... very nice," he says, uncertainly.
"It's useful," she says. "Rare, too. Hill giants don't go down easily. But I think you might need it more than he does. At least more than he does now."
"Oh," says Essek, flatly. He has never used a cane of any sort, has faint memories of crutches just after getting out of the medical wing of the Luxon temple, long before the weakness had returned and he had begun seducing gravity for his own means. The thought of doing so in front of a stranger, using a leg bone like the savage Empire propaganda paints his people to be, is unthinkable.
"A generous offer," he says. "Perhaps another time."
"Perhaps," she agrees, and then continues to stand there, watching him with an unsettlingly steady gaze.
"I need to purchase spell components," he says, finally, and pushes himself off the door frame before he can think about it. The pain in his right leg is, puns aside, staggering. He does not know why it has been so bad as of late, but he suspects he has been carrying his body in a different way since leaving the mantle behind. He had not registered the ache and strain of the weight on his shoulders until it was no longer part of his daily normal.
"You grew like an inch without that thing," Beau had said, smirking. She's incorrect, of course, but he has found that his neck no longer aches when he turns his head, and his spine seems to bend and stretch more easily.
He limps precariously over to a shelf of common gems and minerals, gathering what he needs as quickly as he can.
"What else do you require?" the shopkeeper asks from too close behind him.
He tells her, because he does not know if he can make it across the shop without collapsing, and he has shamed himself quite enough for one day.
"We don't see many of your kind here," she says as she's totalling his purchases.
"I could say the same of you," he responds coolly.
"You could. But I am here with the blessing of the Assembly, so it's not as interesting."
"It's hardly illegal to exist in the Empire. Drow do exist here."
"They do," she says. "Though not often in Rexxentrum." She rests a hand on top of the paper bag holding his purchases, gaze suddenly direct and oddly threatening.
"The Assembly is aware of my presence," he says. "I li-- I am staying with a professor at the Academy."
"Hmm," she says, and smiles at him. Her teeth are very white and very sharp. He feels the urge to flash his own fangs in response, which he has never felt the desire to do before.
"What was the total?" he asks, pointedly.
She tips her head slowly to the side. "Eighty gold," she says, softly. "And I'll throw in the cane for free."
"That's hardly necessary."
"Consider it a gift," she says. "It would be rude to refuse."
Essek clenches his teeth and inclines his head courteously. "In that case, I thank you for your kindness."
"You shouldn't turn away a friendly face," she says. "You can't afford to be picky. Not in this city."
Essek shivers. The building is drafty. "Your advice is appreciated."
He takes the cane, and tucks it away in the attic of Caleb's house. Somehow it moves to the corner behind the coat stand in the front hall, and no matter how many times he returns it upstairs it reappears the next day.
*
"Wait," says Essek, trying valiantly not to choke on his wine. "Wait. Your headmaster truly is the Archmage of Conscription? I had always assumed our information was inaccurate."
"They don't make it a secret," Caleb says.
They're in Caleb's sitting room, sharing after dinner drinks and a box of delicate rose and honey pastries that Jester had sent via a vaguely unsettling little creature that had vanished upon delivery. Essek is curled up at one end of the settee, stockinged feet tucked up beneath him, glass of Caleb-heated wine cradled between his hands. Yasha is stretched out on the hearth rug, staring out the window at the gentle fall of snow blanketing the night. Caleb is beside Essek, a bare few inches between them. Essek wants to stretch his legs out just enough to tuck his toes beneath Caleb's thigh, but the urge seems childish and rude and also one of his legs is mostly numb, and he fears moving it-- the pain is acceptable, a perpetuation of the lack of sensation is the fear that always lingers in the back of his head.
"That seems... kind of bad," Yasha says.
"It's brutally effective," Essek says. "And rather confirms some of the less kind propaganda I grew up with regarding the Empire."
"It is a problem," Caleb says, "I don't disagree."
Beauregard comes in from the kitchen with a second bottle of wine. "Oh hey, are we talking about how fucked up the Margolin thing is?"
"Yes," says Essek, bringing up a hand to hide his shocked laughter.
"It's real fucked up," she says, flopping down beside Yasha.
"He was not excluded from the investigation during Trent's trial," Caleb says. "Oremid Hass is... handling a great deal more of the logistical aspects of both branches of the Academy at the moment. Not publicly, of course, because reputations must be maintained--" Beau snorts. "--yes, I know it is unpleasant, Beauregard, but we are only pieces on the board, we don't make the rules."
"Most power only exists as long as the majority of people believe it does," Essek says. "Though admittedly the Assembly may be a bad example."
"As you say," Caleb nods. "Power is a little more effective when you can quite literally crush your enemies with a snap of your fingers."
"I hate wizards," Beau says. "Full offence."
"Sometimes they are good," says Yasha. "I don't think I could have carried all of that paint home last week without Essek's gravity stuff."
"Density, technically," says Essek, at the same time as Beau says,
"Wait, you were involved in that?" and Caleb says,
"What paint?"
"Oh boy," says Beau. "I have a story for you, and let me assure you it does not end with our house having black walls."
"Dark grey and purple, actually," says Essek. "I thought it was very nice."
"Thank you," says Yasha.
"I didn't realize you two were spending time together," says Caleb. His smile doesn't look forced, but Essek suspects that is because most of Caleb's facial expressions are forced by default.
"Caduceus sent us a book about flowers," Yasha says. "And vegetables. How to grow them, I mean. We're also going to learn how to cook."
"Ms. Jansson is rather insistent that she get to teach us about potatoes," Essek says, flatly. "That being said, she also believes I can barely speak Common, don't know what a pie is, and will be adopting honorary grandchildren for her any day."
"I'm sorry," says Caleb. "Who?"
Essek stares at him. "Our neighbour, Widogast. You wave to her every morning when you leave."
"I feel like my entire worldview just got fucking flipped," Beau says. "Since when the fuck are you two goddamn suburban housewives?"
"Does it help if I remind you of my sword collection?" says Yasha.
"No, that just hurts me in a different way."
"Even I can only focus on research for so many hours in the day," Essek points out. "I've never particularly had an opportunity to explore any interests outside of magic, given my family and my career path. I've told you before I care little for politics."
"There's a lot of free time," Yasha says. "I never really realized how much time hunting and preparing meat took until I didn't have to do it. And all of the fights have to be scheduled so... officially here. They start planning a fight a month in advance sometimes."
"Ja, it is a little different than walking out into the street and punching somebody," says Caleb.
"Everyone is just really living up to the stereotypes tonight, aren't you," says Essek weakly.
*
Caduceus has, for lack of a better word, bloomed under the care of his family and his home. Essek has never not known him to be just on the wrong side of too thin, always looking slightly malnourished and unfocused. In certain ways, he reminds Essek a great deal of himself, moreso than any others of the Nein. He too was expected to take on significant responsibility at an age that most would consider far too young as a result of his family situation, and he too took to it with alacrity and competence. And he, too, presents himself in a way that implies he has everything figured out. Caduceus, too, played quietly with terrible coping mechanisms before meeting the Nein --some people pick treason, some people pick poisonous hallucinogenic lilies--but that part isn't important.
Unlike Essek, his blood family brings out the best in him. For the most part. He has more energy, laughs more easily, speaks with more confidence. He seems settled in a way that is no longer part unquestioning faith and part sophistry.
Essek had returned to the Blooming Grove a few times pre-research trip, post-Lucien, when he had been spending his time desperately trying to run the Vermas outpost at its usual high standards while balancing the ever-present fear that he was going to get all of his staff killed or be killed by them. Returning to the outpost had felt, at the time, like surfacing from an extended dream sequence, and he had found it relatively simple to return to his new routine of paperwork and research and anxiety. Physically, the consequences of Aeor were unavoidable, but mentally and emotionally he had remained unaffected until an otherwise innocuous evening in Caleb's tower during the research trip, at which point he had found himself crying, gasping choked sobs through lungs that seemed frozen up, clutching his arms around himself spasmodically as the horror of everything he had been party to in those few short days slammed into him with all the merciless impact of a gravity sinkhole.
Those first few visits to the Grove had been selfish on his part, part desire for the easy kindness of the Clays, part need for the privacy that Caduceus' healing abilities afforded him. Now, when he comes, he feels it is with far more straightforward and respectful motives. Caduceus and his family are friends, and he enjoys the time they spend together, and he is always eager and willing to learn more about the gardens they keep and to assist with the work.
For as clearly well-suited Caduceus is to his place in the Grove, Essek suspects he feels the disconnect more sharply than other members of the Nein who have remained together. The group had split fairly evenly between Rexxentrum and Nicodranas, and he knows that there are times where the inconvenience of teleporting to retrieve him, or the knowledge of his lack of interest in partying or politics has found him left out of the more spontaneous gatherings of various members of the Nein. Fjord, Jester and Kingsley are far more thoughtful than the rest of them-- Essek doesn't think he's ever seen them forget or forgo the opportunity to include Caduceus, but the rest of them cannot say the same. Essek has as of late made a point of inviting Caduceus to visit other places with him as often as he retreats to the Grove. There is only so much cultural enrichment one can gain from one's own family and, well, Shady Creek Run, and Essek's Rosohna-raised soul cringes at the utter lack of stimulation Caduceus must suffer.
But today, Essek is being selfish again. Alone with Caduceus after a day of gardening and water fights and packaging teas with the Clay family, Essek pulls petals of a clover and stares into the pond.
"Do you worry about losing our friends so quickly?" he asks the water, breaking the peaceful silence that had followed their discussion about Fjord's poor life choices re: evil demi-gods living in the bottom of the ocean.
"Nah," says Caduceus, helpfully.
"It is unsettling," Essek says carefully, "knowing that this is the only life they have. That once they die, that is it. They will not return. But it is also..."
"Natural," Caduceus fills in for him. "Everything dies. Or at least it should."
"Just so," Essek nods. "I do not like to think about it, but... I should feel more guilt for this. I do not think I am built to care for others."
Caduceus is quiet for a while. The sunset drags fingers of soft pink and rich red through the trees, but even in this divine touched place the chill of the north reclaims its territory in the evenings. Essek runs his fingers through the grasses, back and forth.
"I think everybody's built to care in different ways," Caduceus says slowly. "And none of those are better or worse. I also think death and grief are a natural part of being alive, and nothing good ever comes from trying to change that. But... I hate to say it, but a lot of our friends have only experienced death as something pretty terrible. Caleb and Yasha have their pasts-- Caleb's parents, Yasha's wife, their deaths changed the entire paths of their lives. And for a long time, to Jester, death was only something that happened in a storybook, and it was either beautiful or terrible. And, well, then there was Mollymauk. Which is a whole thing. But I don't know if anybody in the Nein has ever just had a favourite grandpa die of old age, or maybe a cousin who died in childbirth. I guess I shouldn't speak for anybody, but I bet Caleb and Yasha, at the least, have never experienced healthy grief. So of course Caleb doesn't want you to go through what he understands to be the experience that comes with grieving the death of a loved one."
"I never said anything about Caleb," Essek objects, weakly.
"Nah, but he seems like the kinda person who worries about this stuff, and I didn't think you'd bring it up on your own."
Essek digs his fingers into the topsoil, probably uprooting some of the grass. "I never expected to outlive any of them," he says. "I still don't. But I... I am, as I'm sure everyone knows, in love with Caleb. And sometimes I think he has similar interests, or could have, but he is holding back. And there are many reasons he would be justified in doing so, but he has mentioned, more than once, the disparity in our respective lifespans. As if it is a burden he must protect me from. And if that is the reason he does not want anything more from our friendship, it is a poor one, and I plan to tell him so. I just wanted to get a second opinion, in case living in the circles of society where consecution is expected and common had skewed my understanding."
"Huh," says Caduceus. "I mean, I don't really know what makes people want to do those sort of things--"
"Nor do I, as a general rule," Essek interjects, petulant. "Caleb is an anomaly."
Caduceus hums. "Really? That's nice, that's really nice. Yeah."
Essek begins braiding strands of grass together. After a minute, he looks over to find Caduceus staring back in the direction of the temple. Perhaps feeling Essek's gaze on him, he shakes his head and turns back, smiles sleepily at Essek. "Right, yeah. Caleb. Death. That's a lot, huh?"
"...yes," Essek says, dryly.
"I think all you can do is point out that whether you do all that stuff together or not, whatever label you put on it, you're still gonna care about him and you're still gonna be sad when he dies. So why not spend all the time together you can, in whatever form that takes. Maybe get him a book about grief, too, we have a list inside."
*
"I need Caleb to show me where to get good beer," Yasha announces, as soon as Essek opens the door.
"You have... a little something, right on your arm," Essek says, and Kingsley flips him off.
"Magic Man 2.0," they say.
"No," says Essek.
"I'm workshopping it."
"Essek, is he home?" Yasha asks, pointedly. "This is very important."
"He's having lunch with the Scourgers," Essek says, as if it is an occurrence worth marking, as if Caleb (Bren?) does not spend hours upon hours with his former colleagues every week. "Why do you need his assistance with beer?"
"Because I miss it," says Yasha. "All we drink is wine, and it gives me a headache. Beau said she would find me ale, but.... I love my girlfriend."
"It was terrible, wasn't it?" Kingsley says, smugly.
"It was," Yasha admits. "But I know Caleb has feelings about beer, so I thought maybe he would be able to help."
"You're not wrong," says Essek. "I will mention it to him tonight."
"Thank you," Yasha says, sincerely.
"I was promised adventure," Kingsley says. "So far this has just been a lot of very tall buildings and humans and elves taking themselves too seriously."
"You should have clarified the definition of 'adventure' before agreeing to such a guarantee," Essek says dryly. "Come in you two, I have a few moments left in this experiment."
Inside the house, Yasha immediately heads to poke through the icebox, while Kingsley explores, strolling from corner to table to windowsill, hands clasped tightly behind their back like a child in a glass shop.
Essek returns upstairs to complete his ley line measurements. Over the past months Caleb's books have migrated to the low space beneath the slanted ceiling, making room for Essek's equipment and work table and notes. He has tried to convince Caleb to move the books downstairs to transform the impersonal sitting room into a library, but Caleb is like a squirrel with his hoard, showing a complete lack of appreciation for the value of displaying one's knowledge or enjoying convenience.
"Your flowers are so big," Yasha says, as soon as he comes back downstairs. Essek feels the tips of his ears heat, which is ridiculous, because his unremarkable ability to follow basic guidance for common house plants is hardly the most impressive thing he's achieved in his life.
"I am doing my best," he says. "But it's nothing, really."
"You should plant a garden," Yasha says.
Essek frowns thoughtfully. "The ground isn't all that fertile. Where are we going?"
"I thought the glassblowers," Yasha says. "And the bakery, and Caleb's dance hall, later."
Essek almost questions the odd assortment of destinations before he sees Kingsley's tail sweeping slowly back and forth in anticipation.
"There is also the museum," he offers.
Kingsley's tail goes faster. Yasha shakes her head, then stops. "Oh," she says, then, taking a breath and nodding firmly, "yeah. That's a good idea."
"The dance hall, on the other hand," Essek says. "Did anyone bring any healing potions?"
Yasha frowns darkly. "If anyone makes trouble I'll kill them."
Kingsley clears their throat.
Yasha exhales sharply, spinning away to pace across to the other side of the room, jaw tight. "No," she says. "Fuck the Empire's racist bullshit."
Her voice is still soft and even. It's disconcertingly familiar from people Essek dealt with from ages 40-118, and he finds himself slipping back into his default Shadowhand persona. Kingsley follows her, and their tail sweeps out like they're about to wrap it around her wrist, but they pull it back before making contact. They wrap their arms around themself and watch Yasha uncertainly, shifting from foot to foot.
"Sometimes violence is the answer," Yasha says, and drops her forehead against the glass of the window. "I'm sorry, I know that's not what we're supposed to be taking away from everything."
"You're not, though," Essek says. "I know the feeling."
"No," she agrees. "I'm not. A Crownsguard followed King and I all the way from the house to the Soul this morning, and he was going to stop us going in until Beau came out to get us. I know you still go out in disguise, even if you don't tell Caleb."
"I'm sure if we stopped to talk to him we could have shown him how charming and harmless we are," Kingsley says, part gentle, part ironic.
Yasha flinches. "No," she says. "That's not... you have to be scary enough to keep them away. Or loud enough that everybody's watching."
Essek tips his head. The perspective doesn't seem like something that would come naturally to Yasha. Though given her propensity for threatening casual violence, maybe it's not that much of a surprise.
Essek dons a light silk coat, and brushes a hand over his hair to ensure there are no strands out of place. The day is mild, the sky hazy enough that he forgoes his parasol, a choice which he will begin to regret as melting snow trickles in fat drops off overhangs and pillars.
Their neighbour waves to him as he's locking the front door and setting the wards, and she pokes her head out of the window to ask after Yasha's garden-- still mostly fragile shoots poking tentatively up from the bare dirt.
Walking with Kingsley and Yasha is somehow different than walking with Yasha alone, or with the humans. When out with either human the glances from passers-by are less hostile, the murmured comments either curious or quiet enough to be easily ignored. Essek does not fear for his safety so much as he does his dignity. Alone, he is often accosted by suspicious Crownsguard, or turned away from shops. With Yasha, it is almost worse, because he knows if he were not with her to set the tone, she could pass for human, and Empire human at that. But once people see Essek, they are already looking for the signs of difference in Yasha, the ways she doesn't fit. But with Kingsley, they have suddenly become a group of their own. Most people won't take their chances harassing three strangers, and Kingsley's cheerful attitude and biting retorts to those who insult them make Essek feel oddly invulnerable. He is not floating, not wanting to bother with the almost-redundant disguise he uses to hide it, and as the pain in his knees and ankle gets progressively worse, even with his density reduced, he can almost imagine a world where he would have grabbed the cane sitting patiently by the front door.
*
Essek is jerked out of his trance by the sound of someone crying out. They are meant to be researching an island of ghosts and dimensional portals and unique theatrical productions for Fjord and Jester and Kingsley. Instead, it appears the four of them have fallen asleep on the floor of Beau's room at the Cobalt Soul. Essek doesn't remember slipping into meditation, which is disconcerting, and he is fairly certain that the bottle of ink upturned near his face had not been empty the last time he'd seen it. Yasha is snoring loudly, cheek resting on an open book, Beau asleep against her shoulder still clutching a quill. Essek rolls onto his stomach and props himself up on his elbows, scanning the room for Caleb. It takes a moment. He's not asleep, curled in on himself in the corner, hands fisted in his hair, knees pulled to his chest. Essek knee-walks closer to him, peeling a scrap of paper covered in repetitive dodecahedral sketches off his cheek as he goes. Beau twitches and snorts awake. Essek holds up a hand to keep her quiet.
"Caleb?" he says, softly. He is not a stranger to the human's nightmares, yet those immediate moments after he wakes remain faintly awkward.
"I'm fine," Caleb says. Essek studies him carefully-- sometimes when he says this it's not a lie.
"Can I help?"
"I need Veth," Caleb says, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes.
"Are you certain?" Essek asks, delicately, mind jumping immediately to Veth's shrill voice and overly-excitable demeanour. Beau shakes her head hard.
Caleb hisses out a breath. "Have you ever sat through hours of torture worse than anything you can imagine, knowing that there is no end in sight but also knowing that it is entirely worth it? Have you ever fucked over someone who has been nothing but kind to you simply because you know that the alternative is not eating the next day? Yes, I am fucking certain."
Essek makes it a habit to keep Sending prepared with so many of those he cares for spread across the continent and the ocean. He begins the motions but Yasha, apparently awake, speaks before he can complete the spell.
"Now? Or later?"
Caleb lowers his hands. "Obviously not now, it is 2:27 in the morning," he says. Beau and Essek exchange a look and Essek lets his hands fall. Obviously.
Yasha nods like this is about what she expects. "Ok," she says. "I'd like to get out of the city, anyway. We could go tomorrow."
"Nicodranas is also a city," Beau points out.
"Out of this city, specifically," says Caleb, clearing his throat and combing fingers through his hair. "Ja?"
"Ja," Yasha echoes. The corner of Caleb's mouth twitches.
----
They teleport to Nicodranas the next morning once they've all finished their rest on moderately more appropriate surfaces than the floor or each other. The sun is already out in full force, and Essek finds himself ducking behind Yasha as he fumbles to retrieve his parasol. She's paused to examine delicate, broad-petaled flowers in a fountain at the side of the raised walkway. He hears Beau and Caleb continue ahead, already bickering about something as they head up the stairs that will lead them to the Brenatto apartment.
"Was I intruding when I asked when Caleb wanted to see Veth?" Yasha asks. Essek considers, briefly, removing his outer robes in deference to the coastal heat before he remembers he has a basic sense of decorum even now.
"No," he says, using the water's reflection to straighten his hair. "I appreciate that you may understand Caleb in a way that Beauregard and I do not, at times. And even if that were not the case, if being a part of the Nein has taught me anything it is that there is value in support and the intimacy of friendship. Or... family, in a way. No one holds a monopoly on taking care of each other."
"You're really good at saying things you don't understand," Yasha says mildly.
"Excuse me?"
"That was really nice. And I feel better. But it doesn't sound like you at all."
"Perhaps I'm attempting emotional honesty as of late," Essek says, unaccountably irritated.
"Ok," says Yasha, and Essek can't tell if she's just humouring him.
It's Luc who opens the door to the four of them, Yasha hunched beneath the awning that shades the row of doors while Caleb shrinks uncomfortably into himself and Essek loiters uncomfortably against the railing across from the door. Only Beauregard meets Luc's enthusiasm with an equal response, sweeping him up onto her shoulders in one enviably easy motion and striding inside with cheerfully obnoxious greetings hollered forth to announce herself to the rest of the family. Caleb follows her, and Essek can see he's already regretting their visit. It is still unthinkable to Caleb that he is worth anyone's time or attention.
"Come on," Yasha says, when Essek hesitates to follow. "It's really hot out here. Though I guess I could just carry you again if you pass out. You're really light. Floaty."
This is more than enough motivation to push Essek across the threshold. He finds his thoughts immediately jumping to Caleb's comfort when he notices the sand dusted across the floorboards of the house, and is glad to see that removing one's shoes seems to be optional. The apartment itself isn't much cooler than the outdoors, but it is a relief to snap his parasol shut and rub the furrow from his forehead as his eyes adjust to not squinting.
He catches Veth's delighted cry from further inside, followed by Caleb's quiet murmur, then a loud crash and Beau's laughter mixed with Luc's cheering. Yasha ventures past him down the hall, and he trails in her uncertain wake until they step into a bright kitchen, dishes piled in the wash basin and table strewn with papers and toys and, inexplicably, a pile of spoons.
Essek and Yasha stand facing each other, caught in a bubble of painfully awkward aimlessness. Essek politely doesn't try for eye contact, which leaves him staring at a child's drawing hanging in the window. It is clearly meant to be the Brenatto family, a small figure between two slightly larger. And then, drawn around the edges, ten more figures. A large dog takes place of pride above the family, with two horned figures riding it like a moorbounder, one red, one blue. Yasha and Beau, distinguishable by a large sword and comically oversized fists, respectively, lurk in the bottom left corner, with Caduceus, Fjord, and Kingsley ranged across the top and right edge. And in the bottom corner--
Essek doesn't realize he's having an emotion until Yasha pushes him into a too-small chair. "You have to breathe," she says, like she's clarifying the somatics of a spell.
"I was going to have that man tortured, with very little interest in his survival," Essek says to the buckles on his shoes.
"He was eating his shirt when we found him," Yasha says. "In a lot of places they'd say that was already torture."
"I should not be in his son's family portrait," Essek bites out.
"Why not?"
"I would think it obvious." Everything is far too hot; he can feel sweat prickling on his skin and the room keeps swaying in lazy loops around him.
"I guess," she says. "But it's not your picture. You don't get to decide if somebody forgives you or not. That's kind of the whole point of forgiveness. There's lots of people who don't have to forgive me, or Caleb, or even Kingsley, maybe. But maybe some of them would."
"That's hardly the same."
Yasha sits down on the floor, putting them at eye level. "They shouldn't be mad at Kingsley, but he's a unique case, and that's just my opinion. Caleb and I-- Look. Trent is a fucking awful person, and I still think we should have killed him. I still want to kill him. But... I don't know how to say this right. I killed people growing up. I killed people long before Obann, and I don't know if it was good or bad or right or wrong, because it was just the way things were. It was just what you did. And I think for Caleb, back then, it was just what you did. When you're a kid you can't really think through that kinda stuff. It's like, if you don't know any different, how old do you have to be before you're expected to be able to imagine something different on your own?"
"Caleb would argue he did know differently," says Essek, because he can recite Caleb Widogast's self-persecution back to front.
Yasha frowns. "I guess. I don't really know enough about growing up in the Empire to say."
"We're going off track," says Essek, who does not want to get back on track and would, in fact, rather just crash this entire conversational train into a brick wall.
"Oh! Yeah. I guess what I meant was, you're a little bit like us, I think."
Essek laughs sharply. "I assure you that is not the case. I was fully aware of my actions and the consequences thereof."
Yasha frowns at him. "Ten years ago I would have said the same thing. A year ago Caleb would have said that too. I'm not talking about the treason, here, that's a different kettle... of... fish... No, why would you put fish in a kettle? Kingsley started saying it and I thought it was just a sailor thing, but it really doesn't make any sense."
"It would make for unpleasant tea," Essek says, and desperately wishes to be anywhere but here. Which, naturally, is when Yeza Brenatto walks in.
"Oh!" he says, clearly startled. "I'm so sorry, nobody mentioned that you guys came too! Can I get you anything? Water? Coffee? Tooth-rotting cereal?"
"Thank you, no. And do not concern yourself, it is no trouble," says Essek, who has spent the last 100 years skillfully navigating the deadly twists and turns of Rosohna politics.
"Ok," Yeza says, "well feel free to raid the cupboards if you change your minds," and Essek says,
"I need to leave," and does so.
*
"Sometimes I reach out for a doorknob or a ladder and for a second I still expect it to be flesh," Jester says, stirring an obscene amount of sugar into her tea.
Essek swallows hard and sets his cup down. Above them seagulls screech to each other in the warm twilight, the gentle breeze carrying bitter sea salt and sweet herbal smoke up to the balcony where they're sitting. Someone is singing faintly in the street below, and the noise of clinking glasses and laughter float out from the open front doors of the Chateau.
He had fled the stifling guilt of the Brenatto home, walking the streets near the market aimlessly as his heartbeat slowly returned to normal. Fjord had found him eventually, guiding him gently to the Chateau like a recalcitrant flock animal. Fjord and the others are in port for the week while Fjord tries to press his contacts for information regarding their mysterious island. Jester had dragged him out to a strip of shops on the shore definitely intended for tourists, where they judged the fashions being sold in the windows and Jester tried to convince him that a dragon fruit is a real thing and not something she'd painted to trick him. Essek has many opinions on the unnecessary varieties of fruit available outside of Xhorhas, and they mostly boil down to 'noone needs that many stone fruits, they are barely even different, and also stop trying to make me eat something that grows hair in the same way your face does, Caleb'. Now they sit outside of Jester's room, sharing a light supper as twilight blankets the city. He has not seen Caleb or Beau or Yasha all day, and it is strange that he feels comfortable assuming they have not simply left without him.
"It is, umm, food. For me. I had the thought one night when I was unable to trance and then it remained in the back of my head for weeks. Berries. Tubers. I don't eat meat anymore."
Jester cringes, tail curling up tight around the arm of her chair. "Oh no, that's... ewwwww. Essek."
"I know," he says. "Apologies."
"Sometimes it feels like all of that stuff in the north was just a super weird dream," she says. "Like. Everything else is so... normal, in comparison."
"I'm sorry, don't you get attacked by servants of an elemental almost-god every week?"
Jester waves a hand. "Sure, but that's normal. Boring."
"Oh. Of course. My mistake."
"I know Fjord would listen if I wanted to talk about Aeor," she says. "My mama, too. I bet Kingsley would even listen, but I'm not an asshole. Everybody's really great. But everybody else is so busy all the time, which I get, I spent a super long time doing a bunch of stuff so I didn't have to think about anything bad."
"Trent Ikithon terrifies me," Essek says. "Ludinus Da'leth would cast 'dispel magic' every time we met because he thought it was funny to see me fall on my face. I realize now that neither of them ever saw me as a peer or a threat-- I was a child or a beast or both, a convenience. It makes me wonder how many others in my life made a mockery of their respect. I certainly can't say any of these things to Caleb."
Jester grabs his hand. "Exactly," she says. "Everybody got fucked up by Aeor, directly or indirectly, so what right do I have to bring it up when I know it's gonna upset them? But... Aeor-- Cognosa, specifically, was really bad, wasn't it? Like, that's not the kind of stuff you have to go through twice in a lifetime, is it?"
Essek almost says the cruelties he witnessed and ordered done in his position as Shadowhand were worse, but then he remembers a facsimile of a person twisting and growing in grotesque mutation, and shakes his head. "No," he says. "What happened to Cognosa was... unique. And uniquely horrific."
"I said it feels like a dream," she says. "But sometimes when you first wake up dreams are hard to shake. Sometimes I'll be doing something really fun, or everyone around me is happy, and all I can think about is how we live in a world where somebody I loved literally tore himself apart with his own hands. Nothing feels safe after that."
"I know," Essek says. "Perhaps there is something to be said for the perpetual distraction method of coping."
He remembers, suddenly, Caleb's casual dismissal-- "I burned my parents alive, I will never be alright." He clutches onto Jester's hand as hard as he can.
-----
Later, they sit in the grass of a nearby park the moons' light illuminating trees in stark white and grey, the faint murmur of a group of sailors drinking in the distance the only sound beyond the faint ever-present lapping of ocean waves. They have chased the haunted chill of their earlier conversation away with Marion Lavorre's engaging conversation and hot chocolate and a series of increasingly ridiculous and poorly executed sendings between them both and Beauregard.
Jester is painting him, and it feels a little like sitting perfectly poised and still before the court the first day he had taken over his mother's seat.
"You're a lot like Beau," Jester says, thoughtfully, from around the paintbrush clenched between her teeth.
"I thought we were friends," Essek says, offended.
Jester giggles. "No, no, hang on, let me finish. It's like, Caleb and Yasha are always kind of expecting things to turn out shitty, right? Like, they fight and they keep getting back up and they think they can make a difference, but they're kinda just... doing what they can before the next bad thing squishes them." She finally spits the paintbrush out, frowning intently at her sketchbook as her feet kick lazily in the air. "But you and Beau haven't had a really big thing crush you. I know you did your not-a-war-crime, and that was super bad, but you're not in jail! And both your and Beau's parents were the worst, but it's like... that gave you practice? Which sounds really bad when I say it. But you two always kinda... expect to win. Like deep down, you know you can kick and punch and argue your way out of anything. Well, metaphorically kick and punch in your case, obviously. And that's really reassuring."
"I distinctly remember saying the words 'I am living on borrowed time' to you," Essek says. The grass prickles at his ankles uncomfortably, and he's fairly sure he just saw a spider pass within inches of his hand, in which case the entire park will clearly need to be burned to the ground.
"I know, I know, but you were also really depressed and scared and stuff. Also hating yourself is like, Caleb's first language, so I bet you were just trying to connect with him because you had been pining for weeks."
"I don't even know where to start with that," says Essek.
"Pfft," says Jester. "You agreed to teach Caleb your super secret magic like, the second time you met him, even though he was a stinky Zemnian human. You've definitely been writing 'Mr. Essek Widogast' in your spellbook."
"He was not stinky," Essek says, weakly. "Someone dressed him up, it was very challenging for me."
Jester smirks, fangs flashing in the moonlight. "I bet he's challenging for you," she says, wiggling her eyebrows.
"I don't even know what that's supposed to mean," Essek says, but he's blushing anyway.
*
The leaves on the Soltryce campus are beginning to turn, burnt oranges, crimson and rust highlighting the trees, fallen comrades of yellow and brown dotting the grass, heralding the ground cover to come. The sun hangs low and bright, rays creeping mercilessly beneath the edges of his parasol.
Essek is perched casually on a stone bench on the north side of the inner courtyard, twisting one of his gloves between his fingers, actively trying not to have an anxiety attack and likely failing at not looking incredibly suspicious. Caleb had suggested he meet him in his office, but Essek had countered with the highly controversial conjecture that he did not want to be "fucking dead ass murdered" (in the words of Beauregard). At least one of his humans understands. Ludinus Da'leth would still prefer him dead, and at absolute best 90% of the students filling the halls of the academy have been raised to see drow as the monster under the bed, best used for target practice. Essek cares for Caleb dearly, and he owes him a great deal, but acting as his educational show and tell for propaganda-fed children still struggling to master Dancing Lights is truly stretching his good will. Essek has helped Caleb grade essays, he's fucking embarrassed that this is the country that has been threatening Xhorhas for the past few centuries. He is resigned to being the subject of gossip simply by virtue of existing on campus--and doubly so once Caleb inevitably makes a point of showing affection to enforce his point--but that doesn't mean he has to like it.
Corvids circle overhead, and somewhere a clock chimes out over the city, echoing back and forth off of towers and stone walls. Essek had never attended a school like this--private tutors had led smoothly into self-guided research under the supervision of various professors at the Marble Tomes. He does not think he would have liked it, but he can see where the appeal lies for Caleb. Essek has never truly felt as if he is surrounded by peers of equal intelligence and imagination and skill. He has been a solitary creature through choice and necessity both. The way Caleb speaks of his time at the Academy, aside from being fundamentally disturbing, paints a picture of a world that Essek cannot even imagine. To live in the pockets of those with the same drive and abilities as oneself, and to be taught by masters of the craft-- it sounds exhausting and overwhelming and dangerous to Essek, but he knows Caleb found it stimulating and exhilarating. Even now as a professor more concerned with guiding young minds in the proper direction and watching for the ever-present hand of the Assembly than on his own research, Caleb comes home energized and effervescent as often as he does pessimistically frustrated or caught in the trauma of his past.
Essek tries to be that spark for Caleb, but at the end of the day their fields of magic are different, and while they often find unique opportunities for collaboration, Caleb's interest in dunamancy was initially based in the desire that he burned to ash in the T-Dock chamber. Bren may have been a skilled interrogator, and Caleb a heartfelt and sturdy adventurer, but Professor Widogast shines in academia in a way that no other work has managed to achieve. Astrid may have to rein in his more seditious line of discussion with students and teachers alike, but there is no doubt in Essek's mind that Caleb was meant to create and discover and then to share that knowledge with others.
Students flood forth from the buildings with the turning of the hour. Essek resists the urge to curl in on himself, to present a smaller target. Every burst of laughter and echoing conversation in crisp Zemnian or Tal'Doreian accents adds to his sudden and paralysing realization of what a stupid idea this entire escapade is. It does not take long before he hears the first comment.
"Shut up a moment, Julian, do you see that? Is that a Crik?"
Then, a moment later, from a different direction: "My aunt fought on the frontlines and she says she saw one tear a man's throat out with its teeth."
Then, "Should someone report this to the Headmaster?"
And then, finally dragging his gaze up from where he's been staring fixedly down at his hands-- "Oh, I bet this is why Professor Widogast knows dunamancy. I told you about my little sister, yeah? She went off to Xhorhas last year because it turns out she was some powerful mage from their beast city. Father had to sneak her past the border in a wagon of beets."
Essek can't help but locate the speaker, a human youth in a startlingly red overcoat, gesticulating enthusiastically to their elf and halfling companions. He tries to remember rumours of a returning soul of note in his field appearing in a human, but nothing comes to mind. He cannot imagine it would be easy for her, though perhaps more so of late as more and more Empire children have found themselves experiencing anamnesis.
He's so distracted staring at the student and trying to place their potential mage sibling that when Caleb sits down beside him he almost stabs him on instinct. His hair is falling out of the ponytail, and his robes are covered in cat hair.
"Good morning," he says warmly.
"I hate you," Essek breathes.
Caleb puts an arm around his shoulders and draws him against his side. Essek relaxes against his will. There are even more students staring at them now.
"Has anyone given you any trouble?" Caleb asks.
Essek shakes his head. "Not... yet. But I have certainly been noticed. I assume a group of professors will be arriving any time now to disintegrate me for the safety of the children."
"Not everyone is terrible the way Da'leth and Ikithon are terrible."
Essek slides the cloth wrapped packet of bread and cheese and plums that he had prepared before leaving the house out of his wristpocket and shoves it at Caleb's chest. "Eat your fucking lunch," he says, politely.
Caleb almost fumbles the package, and the tops of his cheeks pinken. "Oh," he says, softly. "I-- thank you, friend. I assume it isn't poisoned."
"Eat it and find out," Essek says, burrowing closer to Caleb as a chilled breeze sweeps across the grass.
Caleb smiles down at him affectionately. He's just beginning to eat when the first student dares to approach.
"Professor?"
"Ja, hi."
The half elf shifts back and forth, hands clasped behind her back. "Is... um, may I ask, that is-- some of us are curious--"
Caleb's smile is perfectly mild, but his hand on Essek's shoulder squeezes hard.
"Yes?"
She clears her throat and straightens up. "It is unusual to see a drow in Rexxentrum, and we were curious about your companion."
Caleb inclines his head. "Certainly," he says. "This is my dear friend, Essek. He is a very skilled mage as well."
She bows her head politely in Essek's direction. "What school of magic, if I may ask."
Caleb nods to Essek. "You can ask him."
She freezes for a moment, but Caleb remains patient. He can tell she is twisting her hands together behind her back from the slight flexing of her upper arms only because it is something he has trained out of himself. "Um, what... school?" she mutters vaguely in his direction. Caleb twitches as if he's about to say something, but doesn't speak.
"Evocation," he lies courteously.
She nods quickly. "I as well."
"Hmm," Essek says.
The silence stretches.
"Is there anything else we can help you with?" Caleb asks kindly.
"No," she says, almost before he's finished speaking. "No, thank you. Good afternoon."
As soon as she's fled, Caleb slumps against him. "You couldn't have chosen anything less threatening? Some nice enchantment, perhaps?"
"Ask Yasha how benign enchantment magic is," Essek says. He's half serious-- he had been present for the first time Kingsley had casually used Friends in front of Yasha.
"Yes, I suppose. Well, I think that went well."
"She was terrified of me."
Caleb shakes his head. "But her curiosity overcame her fear. That is what we want to foster here. Well, it is what I want to foster."
Essek does not point out the dangers of such a mindset. For Caleb, questioning authority and indulging curiosity may have proven the keys to a life less filled with tragedy. For Essek it is the opposite. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. For as guilty as he feels about his part in beginning the war, he looks at Caleb and sees the alternative path. Essek could have served in the war, could have built weapons and ordered executions in unquestioning obedience to his queen and the Luxon and he does not see how that would have been any better. Most likely if Caleb had rebelled against Ikithon he would be dead.
Around them, young mages laugh and argue and chatter excitedly. Essek remembers Beau, over-worked and exhausted in the Brenattos' parlour, saying
"Listen, there's a reason the venn diagram of wizards in the Nein and people who have actively tortured multiple people is a circle."
Caleb, Essek, and Veth had exchanged uncomfortable glances.
"I mean," Veth had said, coldly, but trailed off.
"Correlation is not causation," Essek had said primly.
Caleb had shaken his head. "No, that tracks."
Essek does not know what is crueler. To imagine that there is something fundamentally broken inside of himself and the people he loves that drags them in the wake of every great wizard in history turned monster under the weight of their own hubris, or that there is something inherent in the deliberate study of magic as an academic pursuit that will doom all of these children to the same.
*
Caleb attends the Academy's fall term graduation ceremony on a late autumn morning, looking every inch the untouchable academic mage in his rich velvet robes and high shiny boots. Eodwulf had met him at the door of the house, while Essek and the cats stood just out of sight in the hallway and glared mistrustfully. The cats may not have been the only ones whose ears were pinned back, Essek will admit nothing. Watching the two of them departing, backs straight and steps sharp and faces blank, Essek is struck sharply by all he has forsaken to live this quiet, smothered little life, hiding his magic and his name and his intellect behind flowers and soups and fireside chats. He reminds himself he deserves this, and isn't sure if it is punishment or reward.
What Caleb had not considered --or more accurately, had not considered the repercussions of--is the presence of the rest of the Assembly's top mages at the ceremony. He comes home sallow and shaky, and brushes past Essek to retreat to the washroom to vomit. Eodwulf has not accompanied him back, but Caleb is willing to speak about the event once Essek has divested him of his outer robes and boots and settled him into an armchair with a cup of calming tea.
"Mostly they just... stared at me," he says. "Da'leth was the only one who spoke to me. Besides Astrid and Athesius, of course. But they all know who I am and what I am doing. I doubt any of them knew me when I was Trent's student, but I can't be sure. They all knew what he was doing to some degree, and none of them tried to stop him. Which I knew, of course, but it is still a bit much to be in the same room as that many powerful people who all want you dead."
"That sounds like every dinner party my mother ever hosted," Essek says, apologetically. "But you survived."
"I want them all to rot in prison," he says, fiercely. "I know that will solve nothing, but it is what they deserve. It is what we all deserve, probably, but they have the sort of influence that there is almost a moral imperative to tear them down."
"You are often too unkind for self reflection or theoretical virtue ethics," Essek says gently. "You would see too many people burn, yourself among them."
Caleb drops his face into his hands. "I was unkind to you for a very long time," he says. "And not for the right reasons."
"I would argue that," Essek says, unsure how the conversation has turned to him.
"Exactly," Caleb says. "I told you you could be better, but I also told you I saw you as my reflection. And I certainly did not think so optimistically of myself. I was unreasonably harsh with you because it felt like a way to prove that I, too, was unredeemable. For a long time I expected the worst of you because it is what I would expect of myself. And I was wrong. Perhaps about both of us."
Essek frowns. "You were never unreasonable. Besides, I'm here, am I not?"
Caleb presses the heels of his palms against his eyes. "I was," he says. "Not always to your face. Not always out loud. And I like to think I began to change my beliefs during our first Aeorian trip."
"You have never been anything but kind to me," Essek says. "I mean that, Widogast."
"Gods, that is worse," Caleb says. "You have known very little kindness, Essek. But that is not the point. I have wanted to explain this to you for a while, but I've never known how to start. But I wanted you to know that the way I treated you back then was often not a reflection on your own actions or character, but rather my own. Until I saw that you are also wise and delighted by learning, and silly and young and kind. And all of those things, too, were things I realized I held in myself. Reflections show us everything, not just the bad parts. And I could see so easily how Da'leth groomed you as an asset, it was textbook. And I could see it from your side-- the arrogance, the powerlessness, the desperation, the insular world that makes lives outside of it feel like numbers and stories. I would have wound up far worse than you, Essek, if I had not broken. I know you have done terrible things, the beacons aside. But I also know you did not enjoy them. Perhaps you did not feel much at all about them, but they were means to an end."
Essek tries to interject, but Caleb shakes his head.
"Nein, let me finish. I have not spoken much to you, I don't think, about my time in school. But it was... it was very good, Essek. I need you to understand, my schooldays, my time with Trent, they are not memories of misery. We were proud to be doing the work, to be chosen. We were strong. So many people we tortured simply because they had betrayed the Empire and they deserved to hurt. And we were very good at what we did. Do you know how fast a body can burn? The heat required to ensure there is nothing left but ash? I do, but it took a while to figure out. I am sure, now, that most of those people were innocent, at least of the crimes we were told they had committed. Guilty of asking too many questions, or looking the wrong way, or handing out pamphlets on the wrong corner. You did not care enough, Essek. We cared far too much. And that is far, far more dangerous."
Essek breathes out carefully. He reaches out a hand, tentatively, to rest it on Caleb's back, rubbing in slow circles. "I am... uncertain what to say. Thank you for sharing that with me, it could not have been easy. But I do not think it does anyone any good, comparing the monsters we were, or could have been. There is no value to be found in this line of thought, my friend."
"Perhaps not," says Caleb. "But all of those people knew what was happening and they smiled at those children today like they wouldn't happily see them become monsters."
"When you live in a world of monsters those who do not become monsters in turn do not last long. That is why you are creating a better world for them to grow into, is it not? If the Assembly will not change you must simply change the world around them until their continued existence becomes unsustainable."
"An infection will still destroy even the healthiest body," Caleb says. "But I take your point."
He leans his head against Essek's shoulder, releasing a shaky breath. "I think I would like to go to bed," he says.
"Of course," says Essek. "Please let me know if there is anything you need."
Caleb reaches out and grabs his hand. "Will you not join me?"
Essek blinks. Never has the expectation been stated so plainly.
"Certainly, if you wish me to," he says.
Caleb straightens up and smiles at him. "I always wish you to," he says. "If I have not been clear."
-----
"We tore down his tower," Caleb says, softly, keeping his eyes fixed on the ceiling. "The three of us. It was... god, the afternoon after the trial. Magic and whatever tools were to hand, and when that was not enough our bare hands."
"I imagine that was very cathartic," Essek says, cautiously. It is dark, even this early in the evening, so he takes the opportunity to study Caleb's body language, the rapid repetitive movements of his hands over the blanket, the hair lying across his forehead and over his eyes that he is ignoring.
"I think so, ja," he says, thoughtfully. "It was also a little melodramatic and unnecessarily dangerous, but we were leaning into the stereotype."
Essek very much wants to ask if they had waited until returning to Astrid's dwelling to fuck, but he's fairly sure he knows the answer.
*
"You're fucking welcome," Beau had announced, appearing out of nowhere and collapsing dramatically into a seat at the table he and Yasha had claimed in the far corner of the cafe where they had been enjoying lunch. She had dropped her head on Yasha's shoulder and made grabby hands at Essek's wineglass until he had grudgingly pushed it over to her.
"Good afternoon, Beauregard," Essek had said, mildly. "Lovely to see you as well." He had not asked how she had found them-- 'Dope monk shit' is the answer to many questions in the world.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever. Guess who won't be dining with King Dwendal this Dawn?"
"I'm sorry?"
"If you tell me you don't know our holidays I straight up won't believe you," she had said. "Somebody thought it'd be a great PR stunt for the King to land at the table of the tragic professor trying to root out corruption in the Empire this year. It's usually a noble family who gets him, maybe once or twice a charity full of starving orphans or whatever. But oh no, some now-jobless advisor managed to make you and Caleb a legitimate option this year."
"I hate everything you just said," Essek had said, flatly, and taken his wine back.
"Me too. Luckily Yudala took a minute to actually ask me if you guys would be cool with it, and I explained that you want to continue to live and Caleb would most definitely say twenty impolitic things before dessert. I think there was supposed to be some symbolic demonstration of ongoing peace in there too, the King dining with a former Xhorhasian citizen, but I don't think anybody wants to spend the money they'd have to spend to protect you afterwards from all the ultra-conservatives or people who lost somebody in the war. You see a drow at the market buying apples and it's a little uncomfortable, but you hear about the king making nice with the former Shadowhand who apparently lives down the street, and suddenly you're waving your burning torches."
Essek had held up a hand. "Consider, however: Da'leth's face."
That horrifying potentiality dealt with, the Nein had all gathered at Beau and Yasha's house to celebrate Civilization's Dawn, as the pirates intended to be in Tal'Dorei for Heart and Hearth, and both Veth and Caduceus had mentioned their desire to spend it with their blood families.
Essek remembers arriving early to the Nydoorin/Lionett house, staggering under an armful of squashes and potatoes, attempting to maintain his floating, his disguise to mask the floating, and the reduced density of the vegetables with mixed results. He remembers Jester, Fjord, and Kingsley arriving laden down with gifts for everyone, and then, later, Beau setting out a row of glass bottles in front of Caleb, Kingsley, and himself, while Fjord held up a score board and Veth mocked them loudly. He also has a blurry memory of lying in the sickroom he had spent weeks in as a child, struggling to breathe and unable to move his legs, all of his books taken away so he could better focus on his prayers to the Luxon, and he remembers a cat standing over his bed and holding out a hat, but the cat's tail had been blue and when he took the hat a beacon had fallen out. He's fairly sure that last memory was a dream, which means he slept, which is never a sign of anything good.
He opens his eyes, and they feel sticky and dry, like they did those mornings he was ill in the winter. He's sitting in an armchair, covered by Kingsley's coat and curled up in such a way that he's almost certain his legs will be taking the morning off in revenge. On the floor across from him Yasha is pinned under Beau and Kingsley, and in the other armchair Caleb and Veth are folded together under a colourful blanket. He can hear Caduceus humming in the kitchen, and if he turns his head, along with a rhythmic throbbing he also gets a view of Luc and Jester out the window, darting around in the garden trying to catch snowflakes on their tongues. There is no sign of Fjord or Yeza, and Essek is entirely disinclined to go looking.
He slowly extends his legs, wincing as muscles and joints protest furiously. Cautiously he attempts to stand, and while his floating spell takes, his head and stomach object vehemently to the movement. He is lightheaded, and even after standing perfectly still for a moment the feeling doesn't go away. He glides silently through the dining room, past the twelve chairs around a table still covered in half-drunk espresso cups and congealed preserves and cake crumbs and empty wine bottles. He makes it to the bathroom where he is surprisingly not sick, splashes his face with icy cold water, and attempts to fix his hair. He wraps Kingsley's coat more securely around himself-- the snowflakes outside have brought with them a sharp drop in temperature overnight.
Caduceus smiles at him when he comes into the kitchen. He has taken over the stovetop to prepare tea, and there are tiny slices of leftover cake and fruit set out on trays in what is obviously meant to be breakfast.
Caduceus holds out a mug. "This should help," he says, clearly amused.
The tea is spicy and sharply herbal, with the sticky sweetness of honey. He drinks half the mug immediately.
Veth joins them soon after, looking far too chipper for the amount of alcohol he knows she consumed. Seeing her through the window, Luc drags Jester inside, and Essek makes very dignified sad eyes at her until she presses a cool hand against his forehead and his headache and nausea vanish. It doesn't do anything for the ache in his legs, but that's nothing new.
He creeps back into the other room to retrieve a blanket, Kingsley's coat not being particularly practical for actual warmth, and sees Caleb flopped over, arms wrapped around a pillow in Veth's absence. He notices, against his will, that there is a spot in the curve of Caleb's body where another body could fit neatly.
He perhaps stands there for too long, because on the floor Yasha stirs. She blinks awake but when she looks at him for a terrifying moment there is a complete lack of recognition.
"Good morning," he whispers, hands flexing at his sides.
She releases a ragged breath, and drops her head back to the carpet. "Hello," she says, just as softly. "Hi. Morning. Home. Ok. Yeah. Wow, also vodka."
Essek covers his mouth to hide his startled laugh. "Yes," he says. "Correct on all accounts."
Yasha curls her arms carefully, tipping Kingsley and Beau toward her a bit more. She looks over at the still-sleeping Caleb, then back at Essek.
"I almost killed Beau once," she says, as if they are having a pleasant chat over coffee. "I stabbed her. It was the same way Molly died, but I wasn't there for that. I don't know how they killed Zuala. I don't think it would have been quick."
Essek remembers Caduceus saying "our friends have only experienced death as something terrible". An understatement, perhaps.
"You should tell him," Yasha says. "Because he isn't going to say anything, even if he's almost sure he knows. Or if he does, it's going to be in the most awkward and embarrassing way possible. Believe me, thinking you're a garbage person and also being intensely socially awkward is a bad combo."
Essek raises an eyebrow. "There is a story there."
"Yeah," says Yasha. "But history doesn't need to repeat itself. Do what Beau wouldn't. Just tell him. You'll regret it if he dies before you do it."
Essek glances back at the kitchen, but nobody seems interested in coming to check on them. Beau and Kingsley are still asleep and snoring. Yasha is watching him, and it is only then that he notices the tears drying in her eyelashes.
He clambers cautiously onto the cushions beside Caleb, fitting himself against him and then immediately burrowing closer as the heat that the human radiates penetrates his thin layers of clothing. Caleb tenses, then brings up a hand to pet clumsily at Essek's hair.
"Essek?" he mumbles.
"Yes," Essek says, and he can feel the blood rushing to his cheeks.
"Good," Caleb sighs, and promptly relaxes, settling his arm around Essek's back and seeming to fall right back asleep.
*
The four of them are in Caleb's sitting room, and Essek is arguing with Beau over the validity of gravitergy as a component of ice skating when Caleb clears his throat, placing his mug of mulled wine down on the coffee table with a careful deliberateness that has all of them tensing up.
"Essek," Caleb says, calmly. "Could you describe your brother for me?"
"...Excuse me?"
"Just... a brief physical description. Quickly, if you would."
"Oh no," says Essek.
"Holy shit," says Beau.
"Should I kill him?" Yasha asks.
"We'll see," says Caleb.
"No," says Essek, and he's not sure if it's in response to Yasha's question or the entire situation.
Someone knocks on the door.
Essek has not yet had a dream of such clarity, but he supposes there's a first time for everything.
Caleb, who is a traitor and a terrible person, opens the door. It is less foolhardy, knowing the various arcane defences layered around their home, and the fact that Caleb can and will light anything on fire at the drop of a hat.
"Oh, good," says a familiar voice. "I had feared I was at the wrong house. Haven't humans ever heard of a grid system?"
"You should know," Caleb says, "that should you be wearing any sort of disguise, or have any sort of offensive spells prepared, things will go very badly for you once you cross the threshold."
"Glad to hear it," Verin says, and then-- "Uhh, apologies. May the Luxon's light shine always upon you, Professor Widogast. I am Taskhand Verin, of Den Thelyss, brother in blood and soul to your partner. I come with no ill-intent and in good faith, as Den bonds us together second only to the Light, and does so soon for you as well, should it be willed so."
Essek feels all the blood drain from his head, and it is suddenly very difficult to breathe. The last time he'd felt like this Caleb had pulled a beacon from a pink haversack and held it aloft in the Bright Queen's court.
"That is a lot," says Caleb. "But well met, Verin. You are welcome in our home."
Our.
Essek isn't going to survive the afternoon.
He doesn't want to turn around. He cannot imagine Verin here, in this space, cannot put the two ideas together into one complete image and doesn't know if he wants to.
Beau is frowning at him, tapping the ladle against her mug thoughtfully. He glares.
"Hello, Essek," Verin says. "I can feel you trying to murder me with your brain."
"That could be a skill I possess, you don't know," Essek says.
"That would definitely cause a political incident, though, and you haven't even told me what colours you've chosen for your wedding yet. Or if you're being held hostage here. Both of these things are very important to me, you know."
Essek turns around. Verin looks... terrible, actually. He's thinner than Essek remembers him, with a new scar down the side of his face and dark circles beneath his eyes. There is hair escaping his braid, and his earrings don't match his cloak at all.
"What's wrong with you?" Essek asks.
Beau snorts.
Verin sets his travel bag on the floor. "My brother the Shadowhand fucked off to the North on a thinly veiled personal research trip for months, took a half-year depression nap in Uthodurn, then ran away to live in sin with a hero of the Dynasty who just happens to be a human former murder-child. You tell me what's wrong with me."
"Excuse me?" says Caleb.
Essek makes some sort of noise that is meant to convey the same sentiment but mostly comes out a very high pitched squeak.
"Apologies," Verin says. "That was inappropriate. I truly do respect that what you and your peers went through is not a matter that should be referenced so lightly."
"Ja, that's ok," Caleb says. "That is... creative."
"Essek," says Beau. "You need to message Jester and tell her your brother is absolutely just as hot as you are."
"I need do no such thing," he says immediately. "Lying is wrong, Beauregard."
"This is going to be the Clays all over again," Yasha whispers to herself. Verin turns to her and inclines his head
"I am Verin, of Den Thelyss," he says. "Defender against the Underdark and protector of all those within our boarders."
"Oh," says Yasha, startled. "I am Yasha. Hi. I... I'm a Champion of the Storm Lord. And defender of my friends."
Verin grins at her, then turns, finally, to Beau. Beau waves her mug. "Yeah yeah, you're the newer, shinier model of the hot boy, fancy title. I'm Beau Lionett, Cobalt Soul Expositor and the only non-Xhorhasian in the room who isn't gonna be related to you soon. Hey, wizards? What the fuck?"
Essek would be more impressed that Beau understands Dynasty introductory customs if he weren't attempting to melt into the floor.
"We're not," Essek manages to choke out. Verin's eyebrows shoot into his hairline.
"Oh boy," he says. "Probably don't let mother know that. Or... anyone else, actually. Literally anyone. As soon as you stop looking lovestruck you start looking traitorous."
"Valid," Beau says. "Also no need to worry about that happening."
Essek flails at her with the hand not holding his mug, but she takes a single, deliberate step backwards and he misses entirely.
"Stop talking," he says, to everyone in the room.
"I admit I'm a little confused," Verin says. "Did you manage to melt my brother's shrivelled black heart or not, Professor Widogast?"
"Call me Caleb, please," Caleb says faintly.
"Why are you here?" Essek demands desperately. "Why are you like this?"
"He absolutely did, by the way," Beau interjects.
"What, I'm not allowed to spend Hearth and Home with my dearest brother?"
"I'm sorry, if I remember correctly, 'unspeakable demons from the Underdark do not take a break for holidays'," Essek says, flatly.
"Not a lie," Verin responds, cheerfully, "but also I didn't want to endure the celebrations. Didn't you ever feel like a pet performing tricks when mother showed us off? Such young new souls and not only can they tie their shoes, but I managed to pull enough strings to stick them into positions of power!"
"It was always satisfaction enough to know that we excelled in those positions," Essek shrugs. "It's hardly as if we were the only ones to gain power through nepotism. Nonetheless, I'm sure getting drunk and making a fool of yourself in front of men you commanded was a far better use of your time."
"It's called bonding, and you'd be amazed what it does for morale." Essek suspects it's also called coping, but he hasn't got much of a leg to stand on in that regard. "Anyway, better that than spending the holiday hating your society and also yourself, alone in the towers you built purely to spite the Zoning Council."
"I was studying," Essek says.
Verin rolls his eyes and Essek can't help but smirk more for how much their mother would hate the habit. "And now look at you," Verin says. "Drunk and with friends for the holiday, like the Luxon intended."
"It's ironic, you understand," Essek says, before he can stop himself. "Because I don't have a home, and our friend accidentally blew up the hearth last month."
Caleb makes a strange noise, but Verin is already staring in bemused horror at the remains of the fireplace, scarred and blackened from where Veth's 'definitely not explosive' experiment had exploded.
"And here I thought you would be safer as a homebody academic," he says. "I'd sneak a beacon out of the Dynasty myself if I thought I could convince you to be consecuted, honestly. If you die in an exploding fireplace I will never stop mocking you, I need you to understand this."
"I would haunt you," Essek says, magnanimously. "Just to ensure you had some intelligent conversation in your life." And then, realizing the other part of Verin's sentence with a sickening lurch, "Please don't steal a beacon."
Verin opens his mouth, but Caleb's hand lands on Essek's shoulder hard, fingers pressing tight enough he suspects they will leave bruises. "Excuse us," he says, and Essek clearly isn't the only one who can tell the civil tone is a struggle, because the whole room goes suddenly very quiet, and the other three all swivelled their gazes to stare at Caleb. Caleb doesn't seem to notice. "I need to have a brief word with your brother, Verin. please, make yourself at home."
And with that, Caleb takes advantage of Essek's levitation to bodily haul him out of the room by the shoulder. Essek wriggles indignantly, and once they get to the kitchen Caleb does release him, but mostly so he can go stand in front of the stove and twist the fire --kept safely inside-- into a roaring, dancing column. Essek finishes his rapidly cooling wine. He suspects he's going to need it.
"I apologize for Verin," Essek says, hoping to head off whatever is upsetting Caleb. "I admittedly never clarified my reasons for leaving with him or anyone else in my family, but there's certainly not precedent to justify leaping directly to some sort of... romantic alliance."
Caleb waves a hand in his direction. "Ja, ja, I don't care about that. He's right when he says it's far less worrying if you left in pursuit of a relationship."
"Then what--"
Caleb hunches his shoulders, gaze still fixed on the fire. "Is it that you do not feel you have anywhere to call home, that you do not feel you deserve anywhere to call home, or that you do not want anywhere to call home? Please answer honestly."
"I... I gave up the right to want something as indulgent as a home when I handed over those beacons."
"Essek," Caleb says, and there's an edge of something like laughter catching harshly at the edges of his voice. "You haven't spent a night away from this house in a year."
Essek wants to point out the many nights they've spent at Beau and Yasha's, the few in Nicodranas. He also wants to point out that a year is not such a significant amount of time for an elf. He doesn't say any of these things, because he's learned Caleb doesn't appreciate pedantry when he's trying to make a point. "And you have been very kind to permit it."
Caleb turns to him, finally, crossing the kitchen in three quick strides to back Essek up against the table. He doesn't touch him, but he stands so close the fabric of his shirt brushes Essek's with each breath he takes. "You have spent the majority of those nights in my bed, Thelyss. Your books are mixed in with mine. The cats come to you first when it is their dinner time."
"I am not so gauche as to assume that that gives me any right to make assumptions regarding your space. And I do not want to over-step, especially given ...my... well. You know."
Caleb's gaze is fixed just over his left shoulder, and his hands keep twitching as if he's restraining himself from reaching out. Essek wishes he wouldn't. "I don't," he says. "But before any of that, listen to me when I tell you you have not once come even close to overstepping. To put it plainly, this place is a home to you as much as it is to me. You have as much right to it as I do, and if I could put your name on the damned paperwork without sending twenty people into a conniption I would."
"That's ridiculous," Essek says weakly.
"It's not, and even it is it remains the truth," Caleb snaps. "I know what it is to be without a home. Everyone deserves somewhere to feel safe."
Essek shrugs slightly. "Debatable."
Caleb touches him, finally, hands coming to clasp his upper arms with deliberately moderated gentleness. Essek has to resist the urge to adjust his levitation to make their difference in height less blatant. Caleb's hands, as always, are warmer than he expects.
"I want you here," Caleb says fiercely. "So it is up to you, if you want to be here. I know you have grown restless at times, or... aimless, at the least, and there is nothing stopping you from traveling outside of our countries, but I want you to come back to m-- here."
"What were you going to say?" Essek says, not really a question.
"Something selfish," Caleb says.
Essek bares his fangs. "You are a poor arbitrator of what Caleb Widogast deserves."
Caleb presses his lips together. For a moment Essek thinks he's angry, but then the corner of his mouth twitches very slightly.
"What?" Essek says, warningly.
"Your little teeth," Caleb whispers. "I'm sorry."
"I despise you," Essek snaps. "I'm attempting to continue the serious conversation you so dramatically insisted on having while our family is in the other room sharing embarrassing stories."
"I want you to stay with me, no matter where we live," Caleb says, fast. "I want to share a bed with you, in any sense you are comfortable with. I want to publish more collaborative spells. I want to take you to all of the terrible staff functions at the school so that I don't have to suffer alone. I want to tell your brother that he can let your mother know you are no longer hers, that she does not deserve you. I also want to get to know your brother, you should never have mentioned potential embarrassing stories." He drops his chin to his chest. "And all of that is unforgivably unfair to you."
"Caleb," Essek says, swallowing hard and blinking furiously to hold back the threat of eyeball leakage. "Surely you know I am as good as yours already. You need only ask. It's embarrassing, honestly. And strange, I've never experienced this sort of feeling, and I don't know if it always strikes with such intensity or if our unique circumstances have done something."
"That is exactly why it is unfair," Caleb says. "You will live centuries after me. Thousands of years, assuming you die near a beacon. And it is cruel of me to encourage your attachment to me. I will die in the blink of an eye, if I'm lucky. Probably I'll be assassinated before I die of old age."
"Firstly," Essek says, "this habit you have of assuming you know best in every situation was adorable when we met, obnoxious in Aeor, and exceedingly reassuring over the past year, but it's really something you need to work on. I am entirely capable of making my own decisions, and simply calling our relationship something else isn't going to change how effected I will be when you die. Also, I have a book for you. Caduceus recommended it."
"What?"
"If that is your only objection I am telling you it is an invalid one. I trust you to know what you can handle (and sometimes those decisions are incredibly suspect, believe me) and I would appreciate being shown the same respect."
Caleb rubs his hands up and down Essek's arms absently. "Essek."
"You are allowed happiness," Essek says.
"I was scared to get too close to you for such a long time because I was afraid we would only destroy each other."
Essek's stomach lurches, and he flinches back. "If there are other reasons you do not want this, please understand I don't mean to pressure you into anything."
Caleb shakes his head hard, and tugs Essek against his chest, hands sliding around to press against his shoulderblades. "No, no, I'm sorry. I only meant to say that I have been attracted to you for a very long time. And I have given myself reason after reason that I should not pursue it. And you keep proving me wrong on every account."
"I won't apologize," Essek says. Caleb smells like woodsmoke and there's a bit of cat hair tickling his nose.
"Nor should you. Every day you amaze me in the ways you are growing and changing, and the ways you already are. I forget, sometimes, that you are more like Jester or Caduceus. You know, I didn't even like Jester when we first met? And I thought Caduceus was a useful tool at best. And now he is one of my dearest friends, and very wise aside from that. And ...well, Jester. You know what happened there. And you, Thelyss, I liked from the start. You were all young-- you are all young, still-- and had never left your homes. And you have all learned and changed and grown-- we all have, really, but you three are particularly comparable. But it is important to me that you know that I liked you, I admired you, had begun to care for you before we knew anything about what you had done. I lo-- love the ways you have grown and changed, but I do not love you because of them. I worry that we have given you the impression that our acceptance is dependant upon your ongoing ethical transformation, or whatever you want to call it. And it is not. If we are going to do this, I need to know you understand that."
Essek tips his forehead against Caleb's collarbone so he can let his face do what it will without Caleb seeing. "I am working on it," he says. "But I know who you are, Caleb. I know the person you have been, and the person you have become, and the places where the two overlap, even if you do not like that they do. I admit that I perhaps idealized all of you in the time between the party and Aeor, but that time was challenging for me in general. I wasn't exactly thinking straight. You must know that without you my life would look wildly different. That doesn't mean I am unaware of the kind of people you are. We are all trying every day to be better, and to use the parts of us that are darker in ways that do not harm the undeserving."
Caleb breathes out, his breath stirring Essek's hair. "Ja," he says. "You are far better at self-awareness than the rest of us, you know."
"When you have lived 120 years under constant scrutiny by all three high dens and many lesser aside, you learn to examine your own behaviour and presentation with a fine toothed comb.”
“I suppose you do,” Caleb agrees. He drops one hand from Essek’s back, sliding it over his shoulder and the side of his neck until he can coax Essek’s head up. Essek leans his cheek into Caleb’s hand. Caleb licks his lips. Essek, who has attempted kissing a total of two times and found it to be rather disgusting both times, watches Caleb’s lips with an unbreakable focus. Caleb tilts his own head down, and Essek pushes up with his whole body, straining to reach the human.
“You absolute motherfucker,” Beauregard snarls, slamming the door to the kitchen open hard enough that it bounces against the wall.
“No,” says Caleb. The hand he has on Essek’s back gets noticeably warmer.
“I’m very sorry,” Verin says, trailing after her and not sounding sorry at all.
“I thought everyone else knew?” Yasha says, because apparently everyone needs to be in the kitchen at this precise moment.
“What is it?” Essek asks, resignedly.
“You told us you were consecuted,” Beau says. “Holy fuck, Essek. We literally decided not to go to Tal’Dorei for Home and Hearth because you’d be too far away from the beacon the Assembly has.”
“You what?” Essek says.
“Excuse me?!” Caleb says. Essek tries to duck out from between Caleb and the table, but Caleb tightens his hold on his shoulder, turning him so they’re both facing the other three. Essek is going to have to modify his damned levitation spell if this casual manhandling is going to continue.
“Are we really going to talk about this now?” he asks.
“We absolutely are,” says Beau. “Come on, it’s not like you guys were gonna fuck with the rest of us in the house anyway. At most we’re getting in the way of some passionate gazes and/or crying at each other over books while you talk about the feelings you definitely don’t have.”
“Well,” says Essek.
“I brought whisky,” Verin says. “Also I lied, I’m not sorry.”
"Is it made of fucking cranberries," Beau asks, flatly.
----
Verin did, indeed, bring cranberry whisky, flavoured with cinnamon. He did not bring his six adopted moorbounders, much to Caleb's dismay. The consecution conversation is a repeat of many he has had with his brother in the past, but with Beau speaking passionately on Verin's side of the argument, while Caleb grudgingly defends Essek and Yasha looks more and more like she's going to cry or break something.
"You are choosing to die," Verin says, "and I do not see how this is any different from suicide."
"If no one has truly studied the beacons in depth, how can you even be sure it is the soul that is preserved?" Caleb asks. "It could be the memories. Or an imperfect copy. Maybe even a very targeted fragment of the timeline which simply gets appended to a different section once the "soul" is reborn."
"Thanks, I hate it," says Beau.
"If only I were able to learn more about the beacons, these are questions that could be answered," Essek says, though his anger is directionless within their group. His anger has also, if anything, grown sharper since Caleb had pointed out that the Assembly had never intended to share any meaningful research with him. He thinks that being out from under the thumb of a society devoted to the Luxon in all ways would have cooled his frustration with its mysterious nature, but if anything it has simply given it new ground in which to bloom.
The conversation goes nowhere, as Essek knew it would. He wishes Verin would not bring it up. It haunts him each time, the fear that his brother will leave, following in the footsteps of their father to his death with their last memories of each other being an argument over thrice damned consecution.
Nothing is resolved. Verin is unsatisfied, Beau criticizes Essek viciously for being a shit older sibling, Caleb puts his arm around Essek's shoulder and clutches him close, guilt evident in his every expression, and Yasha leaves, silently, and doesn't return until late that evening. It isn't until much later that Essek considers discussion of the validity of a soul reborn over and over again might strike a bit too close to home for Yasha. Kingsley visits as regularly as their life at sea allows, but Essek knows there are still times when they have to ask Yasha if a flash of memory had been an experience Molly had shared with her or one Lucien had shared with Cree.
That night, after Verin has settled in to trance in the armchair, and Yasha and Beau have gone home with leftover soup and apple tart, Essek stands at the edge of the bed and is struck with uncertainty.
Caleb comes into the room behind him, a cat trailing behind him and then darting past to leap up and settle in the space between the pillows. Essek's ears swivel as he tracks Caleb's progress as he prepares for bed, the soft thump of clothes hitting the basket, then the rustle as he pulls on his sleep pants, the thud of his spell book on the bedside table, the soft clink of his amulet and his amber knocking against each other as he bends down to check the lock on the window and adjust the folded quilt that is keeping the draft from creeping in where the window frame had become warped from rainwater the previous spring. All of these sounds so familiar to Essek, predictable and signifiers of safety. Essek may not find the sort of peace in routine that Caleb does, but he thinks he can understand the appeal.
But tonight the routine is thrown off, and it's Essek's own anxiety that causes it. Caleb comes to stand behind him, cautiously wrapping his arms around Essek's waist.
"Nothing need change unless we want it to," Caleb says softly. "I have no expectations."
"I know," Essek says. "That is not a worry that weighs on me."
"Good," Caleb says. And then, because he knows Essek better than Essek knows himself on occasion, "There is no script you should be following. I mean it when I say nothing will change unless we want it to, and we can discuss that beforehand. You were right when you said that putting a different label on our relationship doesn't truly alter it."
Essek tips his head back against Caleb's shoulder and peers up at him through his bangs. He's not sure how much Caleb can see with only the faint glow of the candle, but he hopes from this close nothing is too indistinct.
"For the record, I am interested in some of those changes. Not tonight, but... sooner rather than later, if you're amenable.."
"I am, uhh, extremely amenable," Caleb says, his arms tightening around Essek.
"It will be a new area of study for me," Essek adds, feeling a little ridiculous. "You may need to be patient with me, and I suspect at first we will be relying on your expertise."
Caleb's whole body shudders hard against him, and his breath hitches. "That... is a lot," Caleb says. "And I am having two very incompatible reactions, so I think we will postpone that discussion for tonight."
Essek tips his head to nuzzle into Caleb's neck. "It's neither as meaningful nor at hot as you think it is, Widogast. I'll thank you to tell your self-hatred and your dick both to calm down."
Caleb hides his face in Essek's hair, his chest shaking with embarrassed chuckles.
"Ja, ja. Shoo, go reclaim our pillows before we are forced to sleep at the foot of the bed."
Essek presses one quick, daring little kiss to Caleb's pulse point before slipping out of his arms and clambering into the bed, settling on the far side up against the wall and unceremoniously tossing the cat, (Klaus or Turtle, he's never sure which black cat is which) off the mattress. There are a number of areas in which Essek is still unsure where he falls in relation to the cats in the household, but trancing with a faceful of fur is a line he refuses to cross.
Caleb settles in beside him, flicking his fingers to extinguish the candle, and stretching out on his back with a sharp hiss of relief. He had fallen more than once while skating, Essek remembers. It feels like that was days ago instead of hours. The cat leaps back up on the bed, tucking itself in against Caleb's side, resting its head in the crook of his arm. Essek, respecting a good idea and refusing to be out-manoeuvred, copies the cat on Caleb's other side, burrowing beneath the blankets and resting his cheek against the soft fabric of Caleb's sleep shirt.
"I see how it is," Caleb says, amused. He drapes his hand over Essek's arm, and somehow the absent drag of fingertips against his skin feels electric in a way he does not think it would have in the past.
"Go to sleep," Essek says primly.
Caleb huffs. "If I get cold during the night I am pulling these blankets up and it's not my fault if either of you suffocate," he grumbles. Essek smiles.
"Sleep, Widogast," he reiterates.
*
"Listen to this," Caleb says, indignant, as he leans in closer over a letter from Arcanist Vysoren. Essek is going to glue his glasses to his face. "Now they're saying phosphorus endangers any caster who keeps it as a regular component. They ought to just come out and say that it's no longer fashionable to use common components and be straight about it."
"There is something to be said for a focus," says Essek, who had exchanged his silken components bag for a small amber pendant shortly after the first Aeor trip. "It is far tidier."
"And what happens when you lose it?" Caleb retorts. "It's an irresponsible method of casting, Thelyss."
Essek shifts in his armchair, tucking his feet up under him and burrowing deeper into Caleb's sweater, ridiculously oversized on him and something he would not have been caught dead in most of his life. The fire burns high across the room, and outside the weak autumn sunlight has given way to an indecisive spattering of rain. Caleb sits across from him, a cat on either arm of his chair, hair tied back messily and teacup balanced carefully on the edge of the herb boxes Essek has set up in front of the windows. Caleb is still sporting a black eye from whatever he and Beauregard had done the previous week that they refuse to tell anyone about. There is a smudge of ink on the tip of his nose that Essek has no plans to inform him of.
"who am I to stop you if you want to carry around pockets of bat shit?" Essek says politely. "I prefer knowing I will never find myself running low on salt in the middle of a frozen underground archeological hellscape."
He is drinking the tea he brought back from his summer research trip to Marquet, and his lower lip and chin still sting faintly from where Yasha and Kingsley had helped him get his first tattoo-- the line cutting down his lip in a mirror to Yasha's, though his in rich gold and indigo like a twisted rope, symbolizing a willing and proud rejection of his original family. He cannot let Verin see it. He'd probably cry. But the idea had seemed intensely meaningful after three sending's from his mother and six glasses of terrible rum, lying with his head in Jester's lap while the ship rocked beneath them. He and Yasha had both cried. Jester had made him swear she would be allowed to give him his next tattoo (she doesn't need to know he never intends to go beyond the one).
Caleb huffs. "You lack an appreciation for the deeper connection to the weave that you get with material components."
Essek makes a note in the book he is reading and pauses to sniff the air to ensure the apple cake he is attempting to bake is not on fire. Caleb's students have all decided apples are an appropriate gift (Caleb insists they are not a gift but a curse at this time of year) and Essek is sure he is going to run out of things to do with them long before they run out of apples. He's fairly sure that if his dreams were not solely dedicated to unsettlingly intense reflections on the Luxon, he would spend any nights he sleeps dreaming of fucking apples.
"I respect your choices," Essek says, expressionlessly. "Perhaps consider I have used components for the past 90 years, and am fully aware what I am, hmm, missing out on. What did Veth's letter say?"
Caleb is immediately distracted, perking up and rummaging on the coffee table for the parchment that had arrived that morning. One of the cats grumbles in discontent, and Caleb reaches up with one hand to stroke its head contritely. He brushes a hand across his face to push the escaped strands of hair out of his eyes, smudging the ink across one cheekbone. Essek is painfully charmed. He thinks that he will never tire of days just like this one, the small moments of shared experience that make up his life with Caleb. He thinks about Verin, who is still quite certain that there will be a wedding ceremony any day. He thinks about the comfort and safety of belonging to a family of his own choosing. His mouth stings every time Caleb kisses him, and the reminders of what he has lost and what he has found are stark and overwhelming and leave his chest feeling as if it will collapse under the weight of his joy. He thinks Caleb likes it, too. Thinks if the ink were not bleeding out and if the skin did not need time to heal properly Caleb would take satisfaction in splitting the tiny wound open over and over again with his kisses, push the reminder in to Essek's mouth that he is free and he is welcome.
Caleb says, "Veth is going to start a summer camp. I've told her we'll be happy to join as camp counsellors next year."
Well, Essek thinks, mournfully. It was nice while it lasted.