Work Text:
Veth had been told all her life what she was and what she wasn’t. She was not pretty, not smart, not normal. What she was was ugly and stupid and weird, flinching at shadows, carrying buttons in her pockets that rattled when she walked. It had been the easiest collection to carry with her, and she had liked the sound they made, liked how they felt in her hand, round and smooth. When the other children had teased her (coming out of the shadows with their twisted goblin smiles), she would put a hand in the pocket with her buttons and try to focus on the feel of them instead of their chants and jeers. Still, as much as she had tried not to listen, their words had worn her down, like water wearing down rock.
The girls had been the ones to taunt her the most, cruel words as sharp as the thorns of a blackberry bush that some of the boys had pushed her into one day. The boys did things like that a lot, jumping out from behind things and scaring her, pushing her down. She’d come home with torn dresses and scratches and bruises and Momma would tut and admonish her for being so clumsy, and Veth would apologize.
She had tried to tell her, once, about how the other children treated her.
“Maybe if you acted more like them, they would stop picking on you,” her Momma had said. “Smile more. Look friendly.”
Veth hadn’t been brave enough to tell her Momma that she had tried that, that it hadn’t worked, that she shouldn’t have to be the one to change her behavior to suit her bullies. Instead she had nodded, and became even more quiet. Speaking up only worked if people wanted to listen.
Her first kiss had been the result of a dare, because the village boys had changed and grown and so had the shape of their cruelty. The boy, Yeza, with his brown hair and a smile as shy as the sun peeking through clouds, had looked at her with eyes that were a little sad, a little understanding. He was the boy picked last for games, who got made fun of for reading too much, who the others teased for smelling funny.
“You don’t have to kiss me,” Veth had whispered when he had gotten close.
“You don’t have to kiss me either,” Yeza had whispered back. “Unless you want to.”
Veth hadn’t been brave enough to say that she wanted him to kiss her, but she had managed to take a step forward towards him, lean down, and press her lips to his while the other boys had laughed. For once, she had barely heard it.
It was no wonder they had come together, first with that clumsy shared kiss and later into marriage. They had both grown up to the sounds of cruel laughter, but the only laughter in their house had been the sound of their boy, laughing as he played with the toys Veth sewed for him, made from buttons and cloth, her collection transformed. Luke is the joy of Veth and Yeza’s life, and soon he was walking and talking and reading, even though he was so young still, hardly more than a baby.
“I don’t know why you’re so surprised,” Yeza had said the day Luke had taken apart their living room clock. It had been a rare possession for someone in their farming village, but it also hadn’t worked in years. Luke had put it back together and now it sat, ticking away for the first time in forever, on their mantel. “He has clever parents.”
Veth had shook her head. “I’m not clever.” She had helped Yeza get his apothecary off the ground, helped him brew potions sometimes, but he was so much smarter than she was, a much quicker thinker, she knew it.
Yeza had taken her hands in his. “Sweetheart, you are.”
The first time one of the village children had pushed Luke down while they were playing, when the child’s mother had tried to dismiss the action as harmless, just kids being kids, Veth had told the woman off with a voice that shook with anger even as her eyes had filled with tears.
“Momma’s brave,” Luke had said when Veth had scooped him up and carried him back home.
“I’m really not,” Veth had said as she wiped away his tears.
Luke had frowned and placed one small hand against her cheek. “Yes you are,” he had said with all the force and belief of the young.
Years of being told “you’re not,” couldn’t be wiped away with “you are,” all at once. Over time though, Veth came to believe that, at least to her husband and son she was pretty, and clever, and worthy of love. She still hadn’t believed she was brave though, not even when they were captured, and she had fed her few scraps of food to Luke to keep him from starving. Not even when they had escaped, when they had run, when she had lead the goblins away from them, her beloved husband, her bright boy. She had always run from bullies. That did not make her brave. Throwing acid in the face of their leader had not made her brave either. She had been so scared the entire time, so very afraid as they had dragged her to the river. Afraid for her husband. Afraid for her son. Afraid to die.
She had woken up a goblin, and that was the worst not of all, worse than not pretty, not clever, not brave. Not someone who could see her husband and son again. Not someone people wouldn’t kill on sight. Not a halfling. Not a person.
The morning she had woken up and realized she couldn’t remember what her son had looked like was the day she had run away from the goblin camp, fear driving her legs, pounding in her heart, gnawing at her mind. Magic had made her this. Magic could change her back. But how would she find someone who wouldn’t kill her the instant they saw her? Who would even believe her?
Alone in the world, she had stolen out of need. She needed to food to live. She needed buttons and shiny things to replace her lost collections, to remind her of things she once loved. She needed alcohol to dull the pain, the horrible lurching sickness in her heart every time she looked down at green skin and her four fingered hands.
She had got caught one day stealing a bottle of wine, and to her amazement they didn’t kill her right away, just roughed her up and insulted her before throwing her in a jail cell. She had curled in on herself, sobbing quietly, her ribs aching. She’d probably be dead in the morning, if she didn’t escape. She wondered if it would be worth the effort to try.
“Hallo?”
She had shrieked and scuttled further back into the corner as what she had thought had been a bundle of rags lifted his head and spoke to her. In the dim light of the cell she could make out a human face streaked with dirt, his red hair and beard filthy and tangled. There had been something in his eyes though, those blue eyes the color of the sky at midsummer. Or rather, something that hadn’t been in those eyes. Not fear. Not disgust. There had been a wary sort of kindness in those young eyes in that old face, kindness and something a little bit lost.
“I am sorry. I did not mean to scare you. I—“ He had snapped his fingers and a cat had appeared, orange and white, spotted and striped. The cat had come over and rubbed against her leg, purring.
“You’re magic!”
The man, who had been standing up, flinched.
“I am a wizard, yes.”
“Can you get us out of here?” As soon as she had asked it, she realized it had been the wrong question. If he could have gotten out, he would have done so already. “Never mind. You can make things? Can you make lock picks? They took mine from me.”
“I can send my cat to find something maybe.” The man had stepped closer and then hunkered down until he could see her face. She had waited for him to scream, or to sneer. He had done neither. “What is your name?”
She had opened her mouth and then closed it again, her old name dying on her tongue as surely as she had died in the river. She was not the person she had been. Someday maybe she would be again.
“Nott,” she had told him. The horrible name the other goblins had given her, the joke of a name. “Nott the Brave.”
That was when everything had begun to shift, the day she had met the wizard she would pin all her hopes on, the lost, bright boy who made her heart ache for her own son. There would be others, a collection of friends as varied and bright as buttons, but he had been the first to look at her like she was a person, to see what she was, and to look past what she was not.