Chapter Text
Caleb stares at the ceiling.
Unpainted oak stares back. Sturdy, plain, arranged just so. Lightly stained — deft hand, whoever did it. Practiced. The color is even, smooth.
He finds himself scanning the whole of it, searching for dark spots, warped corners, scratches.
He finds none on the ceiling, but two near the wall, and what might be a scorch mark by the door. Hard to tell, in the half-light.
Probably not, though. From the outside, the inn appears largely unscathed. There is little reason its inside should be any different. Especially given that what he remembers of it, what stuck out through the haze of checking in and bedding down, was — impressive, to say the least.
Caleb is no architect, but he has been to a barn-raising or three in his time, enough to know good work when he sees it. And he has slept in gods only know how many shitty little inns — enough to recognize shoddy supports and toxic molds, if nothing else.
He can even name most of the those, now. Nott pointed them out. Identified them for him, sounding for all the world like a little textbook. He remembers something like a smile tugging at the side of his mouth, as she spouted a name longer than she was tall. Remembers asking what made that one different from the one to its left. Remembers her shrugging, shrinking a little smaller, muttering half an explanation, half maybe a joke.
Too curious for his own good, he asked more about the effects, and she answered, half-stumbling, but gaining enthusiasm the longer she went, and it was all he could do not to go and touch it, this strange little mold that had his strange little companion so excited.
Caleb closes his eyes.
Not even a year ago, that conversation. Not even a year.
They have slept in so many inns, since. So many rooms, with so many molds. They blend together a bit, in his head, past a certain point — save for a detail or two about each. This inn with that mold, this one with the man who would not stop looking at Nott sideways, this one with the cramped room they thought was probably a broom closet, actually, this one with the old woman with the peacock hat and the bright necklace he saw Nott playing with three days later, this one with the odd spackled ceiling….
It is odd. All the rooms they have stayed in, all the beds they have shared, with all of their quirks — and this the strangest.
Because Nott may have been in it before. Because she grew up here — well, not here, in this inn, but here, in this town. Because she is not a goblin from outside Felderwin but a halfling from within it. And a mother. And married.
Married.
He turns it over in his head, again. Married. Nott is —
It’s — it just —
So much else is new, so much else is dissolved and reshaped — another name, another age, another history he must weave around his understanding of her — but this….
He finds himself stuck. Caught on it like a burr on the bottom of a woolen sock, when one has gone out without shoes.
...They stole a silver piece from a halfling cobbler, once upon a time. Nott joked about stealing his shoes. Because it would be funny, she said. And he had agreed — it would be funny — but cautioned against it. If we take something so big, he had said, we will be noticed. I am not so sure that it would be wise. And she had agreed, and that had been that.
But the shoes had been just her size.
He remembers realizing this, two hours after leaving the cobbler behind, and rationalizing that the silver could easily buy a pair of shoes for her. Offering as much, a couple of days later, when they reached another town. Remembers her refusing. Telling him she didn’t like shoes, so much. They don’t fit. The proportions are wrong. He remembers suggesting shoes sized for smaller folk — dwarves, maybe, or halflings. No, she had said, no. Those were trouble, too. It’s the claws. They get in the way. And the toes. They’re too long. Even with sandals, they just sort of hang over in the dirt and it just — it doesn’t work.
And that had been that.
In hindsight, he thinks. The specificity of her argument, the certainty in her voice, the words she used…. The claws, the toes. If it had been only that once, then maybe coincidence, maybe understandable that he had missed it. But he thinks back, and back, and back, and she has always talked about her body in those terms. It’s the teeth, he remembers her saying. It’s the face. It’s the —
Apart from a very few times she expressed disliking this or that — her hands, her skin — she has never said my. Never called the body hers. Has, in fact, said that it does not feel like hers. Openly, outright.
Looking back, it really does make an alarming amount of sense. There has been so much, over the months they have known each other — the false names she has chosen for herself. Bren. Veth. Otto. Her tendency towards halfling disguises. Her ability to speak Halfling. Her hatred of goblins. Her terror of water. Perhaps even her fervor with the Iron Shepards, after she heard about Nila’s little one — perhaps even before that. She stayed back with the little bird child, when no one else did, didn’t she? He had assumed it was the water, then. But now….
She has always been gentler, where children are concerned. It had made sense before — an intentional kindness she wishes someone had shown her, when she was a child — and perhaps still does, for that reason. But now for another as well. One puzzle piece shifting, another slotting into place alongside, and of course she is a mother.
Of course.
And a wife, as well, although that — still catches. Does not slot in as neatly, alongside the other. It should, it should, it sort of — sort of does, except for how it doesn’t. He just wants it to. Because if this makes sense about her, if it makes sense, then. Then it is just a matter of shifting pieces around. The picture is the same.
But it just — doesn’t.
He will have to make it, though. Take the puzzle apart, examine all the pieces, find which ones he has shoehorned in wrongly, replace them. Find which corners he has squashed in the process, smooth them back out. Put it all —
She stirs, down by his ankles, and his eyes snap to her. She goes still. He forces himself to relax, in increments. Untensing his shoulders. Unclenching his jaw. Loosening —
She stirs again. Makes a small noise.
He flings up a globule, glances round the room — clear, empty — and then back to her.
Her eyes are closed, but darting back and forth beneath her lids. Her brow is pinched. Chest rising and falling too fast, even for her. Normally all of this means he shakes her awake from an arm’s length away — she does not like to be touched, seconds after these dreams, but likes being woken by loud noises even less, so. The compromise, while not perfect, usually does the job.
But.
She’s facing him, is the thing. Not tucked against his side with her back to him, watching the door.
Facing him, instead, and down by his ankles. Like they are little more than fresh-met, like she still keeps track of the exact pocket his never-used dagger rests in. Like —
She twitches, just faintly. That barely-there shifting of her shoulders, of her fingers, like she is seconds from snapping upright, or rolling off the bed onto the floor. Or both.
Caleb tells Frumpkin to get a move on. With a small mrrp, he does. Hops down from Caleb’s shoulders, weaves his way over to Nott, and settles down in front of her. Nestles his head on his paws, purrs gently.
Caleb re-casts Dancing Lights and watches her closely. This did not always work, in the months before he grew comfortable enough with her to try shaking her awake. If it had, he would never have stopped doing it. So — if she is still agitated after a minute has passed, he will wake her the usual way.
When the spell ends, he tells himself. When the spell ends.
He counts the seconds anyway, chewing the inside of his cheek.
When he reaches twenty-five, she is still shifting, making small noises. Frumpkin stands up, and Caleb is halfway to ordering him back down when he weaves round to Nott’s back and lays down again. Begins to purr. Caleb frowns — that is not how this is done and Frumpkin knows it — but keeps counting.
When he reaches forty-seven, her breathing slows. Fifty-two, and her face relaxes. Fifty-eight, and her fingers still.
He doesn’t wake her, when the spell ends. Doesn’t re-cast it, either.
Just sits, in the half-dark, and listens to her breathe. Slow, even, soft. Quiet. Ghosting over the sliver of skin where his trousers don’t quite meet his drooping socks.
Any other day, the sensation would be near-intolerable, a crawling muggy half-warmth fit to make him climb out of his own skin. He’d nudge her away gently, or pull his socks up higher, or scoot down on the bed, at least.
But tonight — well. It is still uncomfortable. But he does not move, except to settle down himself.
He closes his eyes, breathes, and swallows past a lump in his throat. Finds himself, after a fashion, counting her breaths.
One, two, three, four, five, six….
On, and on.
Somewhere in the low nineties, his eyes grow hot. She is still breathing, muggy and awful, against his ankles. Still asleep. Still not moving away.
Just lying there, sleeping peacefully. Beside him. In the wrong place, looking the wrong way — beside him, still.
A small miracle, after the day she has had. A gift he does not deserve, after the part he has played in it.
She has every reason to sleep elsewhere — share a bed with Jester, or seek her own room altogether. Every reason to avoid him. To loathe him, even, shoot him between the ribs, if she wants. He would not blame her. Would do the same, in her shoes.
But here she is. Crossbow stowed away, hands folded loose in front of her chest, breath horrible on his skin. His cat at her back.
A small miracle. An impossible stroke of luck.
He reaches for the stone in his pocket, somewhere around two hundred and thirty, with a quiet, shuddering breath of his own. Wraps his fingers around it, tight.
Wholly undeserved.
But the thing about luck, he thinks distantly, as he presses his fingers harder, is that it does not operate in those terms. It is not about morality, or worth, or debt of any kind. It is never deserved.
It just is.
Caleb smooths his thumb over the stone’s surface, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Like fate, and time, and reality.
And numbers.
Two hundred and fifty-four. Two hundred and fifty-five. Two hundred and fifty-six. Two hundred and….