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There’s days after it happens, while they are on the road, when Beauregard is silent.
She throws rough quips around, sure, just like always. She answers when addressed, and she can hold a conversation. It’s easiest when she is talking to Jester, because Jester has been silent too, and that just strikes an entirely wrong chord with her. So Beau chatters, in a way that she is not used to hearing from herself, until there’s a ghost of a smile dancing around the corners of Jester’s mouth again.
Fjord seems just as distracted as her, though she dares say that he’s burdened by a couple more recent memories, beyond the ones that haunt the back of her own mind. But he needs an occupation on the road as much as she does, so they play boulder-parchment-shears until they both tire of it, and then Fjord teaches her some of the card games he says he learned in his sailor days. At some point, she catches his eyes lingering on his hand for much longer than they should, like he’s far off (maybe miles back down the road, eyes tied shut and wrists shackled, listening to his friends scream). She bites the inside of her cheek and plays her best card in advance. Pretends to be angry when he points out the mistake seconds later with a barely-suppressed grin.
She tries to talk to Caleb, too, but he shuts her out. Behind his books, and his cat, and his Nott — Nott, who barely leaves his side throughout the journey, talking to him in hushed voices in between swallows of whatever garbage brand of booze she has in her bottomless flask — he just hunkers down, eyes blue and unblinking at times, and there’s nothing she can do to reach him. Beau does not quite have it in her to despise them both for it, but it’s a near thing.
So she stays silent, and by herself. Sometimes, she feels Caduceus’ glances lingering on her, but she refuses to pay them mind, because he cannot understand their loss. He may have dealt with grief before, may have dealt with people in despair, but he has not dealt with this, this hurt that has somehow burrowed its way deep into her chest cavity, hollowing out a space right beneath her heart that infuses each and every thing she feels with a certain twang of bitterness.
This is personal, and grief does not feel like good enough a word to describe it.
During one of their evening stops, Beau finds herself drawing absentmindedly in the dirt, and when she looks at the lazy shapes her fingertips have sketched, it’s an eye like the one Molly has had in his tattoos, and before she knows it her mind is diving down a deep dark hole wondering “how long do tattoo colours even keep underground?”, and then she’s dry-heaving by the roadside. When Jester fusses, she brushes her aside, claiming to have chewed on some tree-bark earlier in the day to soothe a muscle ache. Must have missed the willow, after all.
Jester raises her eyebrows and shrugs, Fjord coughs and murmurs something that sounds like “been there”. Caleb glances up from his spellbook before burying his nose in it again. Nott leans against him, studying over his shoulder. Caduceus simply looks at her, silent.
An anger rises up in that hole in her chest, in that moment. Before anyone can react, she’s up in his face, hand clenching his stupid soft shirt, demanding “what’re you looking at, fucker?”, but he just smiles slightly and says “nothing”, gently extricating her fingers from his collar. She storms off into the woods, finds a tree that’s still climbable even in the fading light, and pulls herself up branch by branch, until every muscle in her arms is trembling, her body feels like a sack of wet flour, and she can peek up at the night sky through the canopy of leaves.
She shifts around until she’s more or less comfortably leaning against the tree trunk, one leg dangling from the branch. Head leaning back, she looks towards the stars, and she presses her fist against her lips, bites her knuckles until she tastes blood, and makes no sound as she cries.
Caleb’s words ring in her head again, his voice rough and shaky, held together with threads of numbness and habit. “Shine bright, circus man.” And that’s it, isn’t it? A light that’s been taken from them, now, a song and dance, a mirthful smile and kisses on the forehead.
Over time, the shudders that wrack her body become less intense, less all-consuming. Her hands trace the raised edges and broken caverns of the bark until she is calm again.
She thinks about the way he narrowed his eyes at Fjord as he talked about the orphanage, the way his shoulders shifted and his tone became calm and resolute instead of hesitant and careful, and she wishes she could go back to memorize those movements. Maybe if she had, she could make this better now. Maybe she could pull the others into the cold waters of reality. Maybe she could lie to herself a little better and pretend to be alright.
Beau wraps her arms around herself and quietly leans forward to breathe in the musky scent of the forest as it lingers on this tree branch she is resting on. She wills herself to focus on the cold air blowing through the leaves and across her bare skin, still coated in sweat, and she breathes, and she stays.
It takes a couple minutes, and then some more, until she sits up again.
She throws one last glance towards the stars, presses her lips together, and tugs the fabric of her robe off her shoulder to roughly swipe at her cheeks. If she mutters a few words into the wind, under her breath as she wipes the tears off her face, that’s no one’s business other than her own, she thinks.
Branch by branch, she makes her way back down the tree, letting herself drop the last fifteen feet and sticking the three-point landing without a flourish. She lets her memory guide her back to camp until the firelight starts shining through the trees. As she steps beyond the treeline onto the road, she notices Caduceus and Jester keeping watch, both already half-way to waking the others before they recognise her and relax.
Beau bites the inside of her cheek again, straightens her shoulders, and beelines towards Caduceus. He regards her with that eerie look of his as she stands to her full height in front of him, reaching up to about his collarbone. She stares him down for a long moment.
Then she says, curt and abrupt, “I’m sorry.”
He tilts his head, then nods slowly. “Apology accepted.” The smile playing around the corners of his mouth is too kind and knowing for her to deal with right now, so she just nods back and turns to Jester, who has sat back down by the fire.
Beau can’t help but feel her heart twist as she looks at her, legs folded and skirt neatly tugged over her knees, looking at her expectantly. “What’s the matter, Beau?”, Jester asks, voice soft and lilting, and she almost breaks into tears again.
Instead, she trots over and drops, cross-legged, next to the tiefling, and leans her head against her shoulder. For a brief moment, she feels Jester hesitate, but then there’s an arm wrapping around her shoulder, squeezing just once before settling into a comfortable hold.
Caduceus quietly makes his exit, rustling about his bedroll for a minute before falling silent again soon after.
They don’t wake the others for their shift, so when the sun starts creeping over the edge of the horizon, diluting the dark of night with its pale orange light, it’s just them sitting there next to the still-glowing embers.
Beau thinks the hollow space inside her chest feels just a little less cavernous, now. Or maybe, it's just slightly more bearable this way.
They hold each other. They watch the sun rise.