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Caleb carried Nott to their quarters. One arm propped up the goblin's legs and the other held her upper body close against his chest. They were trembling - though she was small, she was not so small that someone as weak and worn out as him could lift her without strain. But he held tight and did not drop her as he slowly navigated down the stairs into the murky dark below the deck of the ship, leaving behind the sunlight and confused chatter of the crew above.
They reached their room and he nudged the door open with his shoulder. It swung closed again behind them with a creak and a gentle thud, and Caleb made his way to bed. The mattress bowed underneath him as he sat on the edge. He adjusted his grip on Nott, letting her settle down in his lap, but did not let go entirely. He could not bear to let go yet. Both his arms looped around her, pulling her in as tightly as he could. This close, he could feel her chest rise and fall with each breath, feel every little movement and twitch that she made. He bent his head down, nuzzling aside tangled hair to bury his face in her shoulder. The scent of blood and ash that still clung thickly to her skin choked him.
I am sorry, I am so sorry, Caleb thought desperately, but could not force the words past his lips. He knew that they would turn into sobs. So he held on to Nott in silence, eyes squeezed shut to force away tears and breath shuddering. Through his coat, he could feel a clawed hand reach around and pat him on the back. He gave himself a minute, another minute, and then just one more, to stay locked in an intimacy that she had been the first to share in with him for over a decade. To reassure himself that his closest companion was still alive and breathing and there with him.
Eventually he broke away. He let his arms fall back to his side and leaned back slightly, letting out a shaky exhale that turned into a quiet chuckle. Nott shuffled back a bit, but stayed perched on his knees, blinking up at him with her wide and cat-like yellow eyes. He turned his gaze further downcast, not wanting to meet hers.
“Are you alright, Caleb?” she asked, in that raspy and quavering voice.
“Ja, of course,” he answered quietly, forcing a flash of a smile as he looked back at her. “I am just glad that you are.”
He brought up his hand again, rubbing two fingers against either side of the fabric of her shirt, where one of the dragon’s claws had carved a huge tear through it. Caduceus’ healing had stopped the flow of blood, but when he shifted the cloth the scar underneath was still visible - an angry jagged red slash across her skin, stretching from neck to hip.
“It’s okay, Jester’ll Mend it,” Nott chirped, starting to fiddle with the shirt too. She sounded wearier than usual, but not weary enough for someone who had twenty minutes ago been on fire and spilling her guts onto the wooden deck.
Caleb blinked, swallowed, moved his hand again to cup her cheek and rub his thumb across her sharp cheekbone. He didn’t trust himself to speak right now. Not without vomiting up the tangle of stress and guilt inside of him. It had been churning there since he had stumbled from the portal. He knew he had made a mistake as soon as he reached out and found empty air where Nott should have been behind him, while the others who had swarmed over to help steady him demanded ‘Where’s Jester? Is she coming?’. His heart pounding with magically infused adrenaline, those moments of waiting for the little goblin and the blue tiefling to appear had stretched into eternity. How could he have abandoned two of the people he held closest to his heart in a rush to save his own skin?
Cowardly. Despicable. Unforgivable.
After a few more moments sitting together in silence, Nott clambered off his lap and started to ready her things for sleep. She tugged off her cloak, kicked off her boots and pulled weapons and pouches off her belt. It was a routine that he had observed every night over the months they had travelled together, and it was comforting in its familiarity. Caleb was halfway through unlacing his own boots when Nott pulled the tomes they had taken from the library out of her pack and set them down on a messy pile on the desk. Small specks of dust were dislodged by the soft impact and sent spinning through the air.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to unlock the rest of these now?” Her head was cocked questioningly to the side as she looked up at him.
Under his cloak, he found the volume that he had tucked there. Slipped into his belt beside the pouch that held his spellbook, the hard edges had been digging painfully into his skin. The bronze casing glinted in the dull light as he pulled it out and looked it over. What arcane knowledge was held within something so ancient and secret? Could it contain the puzzle piece he so desperately needed, the key he had spent the last five years looking for? Most likely, his dreams were hidden somewhere in one of the hundreds of books that the two of them had left behind.
“No, not tonight, Nott,” he said, voice cracking around the edges. He placed the tome beside the others to add to the painfully small collection. Nott’s features drew together into a slight frown that disappeared before he could figure out if it was a look disapproval, concern or confusion.
“Whatever you say, Caleb,” she said, returning to her preparations.
As he unwound arcane string to set around the door, he knew that his mind should have been filled with plans to return and sweep every single shelf clean, or at least turned towards picking apart the contents of the books that they had taken. But his thoughts had become stuck in a torturous loop. He wondered if these books had been worth the risk that had been posed to his companions, and then expanded that to wondering how many books would have made it worth it.
In that moment, it felt like an entire extraplanar library wouldn’t be worth loosing the only person he had come to unwaveringly love and trust. But where did that leave him? A man disgusting enough to leave his friends facing down a dragon alone, and too cowardly to do what had to be done to undo it all.
“Caleb?”
Yanked out of his thoughts by Nott’s questioning voice, he realised that he had been standing with his hands on either side of the door frame, staring blankly at the wooden planks, for at least a minute. He exhaled hard and screwed his eyes shut.
“I - ja, just one moment longer, I’m finishing the spell,” he told her.
A few more twists of the thread, a few more muttered arcane words, and the Alarm was set. Caleb turned away from the door and Nott was waiting, standing by one of the bedposts. He settled down on his back on top of the covers, and instead of climbing up to her top bunk she clambered into the bed with him. Like when they slept out beside a campfire, or could only afford one bed at an inn, she curled up beside him with her back pressed against his leg. He couldn’t tell if she needed comfort herself or knew that he did, but either way he was indescribably grateful for her closeness. He lifted his hand and snapped to summon Frumpkin to snuggle into her other side. When he lowered it again, he found the top of her head, giving it a gentle stroke and letting his fingers come to rest tangled through her hair.
“Goodnight, Caleb,” she whispered.
“Gute Nacht, Nott,” he murmured back.