Work Text:
"Name please?"
"Caleb Widogast."
The man taps the pen against the clipboard with a sharp rap, the couple behind him speaks in hushed whispers he doesn't miss. Flippant questions about his missing plus one for the gala, but he's learned not to bring baggage along to these things. Not when they might find the wrong picture, ask a few more questions than necessary.
"There you are…" the man mutters and the scratch of the pen is like nails on chalk.
He can't help but wrinkle his nose and adjust his tie to avoid the unpleasant crawl it sends skittering under his skin.
"Go right on in, sir."
He offers a cordial smile, a slight nod, all the pleasantries begotten of status as he steps past the man and through the revolving door that gives under his touch like liquid gold. And the inside of this place has hardly changed in decades, still all marble and moulding, chandeliers hung from high ceilings and the halls filled with the chatter of the affluent.
He makes note of the few who turn their heads at his entrance, the eyes that linger, pulls at the sleeves of the suit jacket and straightens his back, checking his watch for the hundredth time that day. He doesn't need it, hasn't needed it since the accident, but it helps calm his nerves to see the tick-tick-tick of the little hand moving and trodding along. Even if the passage it keeps track of is all too meaningless to him.
And he's on time, according to the little thing, just in time for the speaker to drone on about whatever charity they're all going to gawk and fawn over this week. He doesn't despise them for giving their money, of course not. No, he despises the reasons they do give it in the first place.
He moves to the banquet hall wall, the dark, veined marble still the same as it was at the peak of the war. More photos have been added to it's collection however, countless more, decades worth of people who have come and gone. The photo is here somewhere, towards the beginning of this place, just after the founding, and--
Ah, there it is.
"Is he your great-great grandfather or something?"
He frowns, tucking a stray lock behind his ear, toe-tapping once, then twice, and he doesn't really want to turn around, not if they've already picked him out of a crowd. That's the danger of returning to places like this, halls filled with memories sometimes have ghosts in them; or at the least, the children of those ghosts.
"Something like that." He mutters, under his breath; dismissive, crisp, cool enough he hopes it'll have the inquirer deciding this is a venture they don't want to make.
They slink closer, a tattooed palm coming to rest between two photos. Some with faces he recognizes, another he thinks he had fled the city at that point when a man said he looked too familiar and reached for the telephone.
"You sure look like him." The tiefling purrs, eyes flicking over him and back to the photo, and Caleb did not come here to flirt or amuse any of these people.
He came here to make a donation and convince others to perhaps up their own offerings as well. Money is as useless as it is immaterial when it comes down to it. They all just haven't lived as long as he has to realize it yet.
"Are you here for the event as well?" Caleb deflects, turning his own eye to the tiefling's-- and they are indeed a tiefling, from the ruby-drop eyes to the flicking tail-- dress.
"Something like that." They echo with a smirk, leaning fully against the wall now, jostling a photo in their wake and Caleb can feel his left eye nearly twitch.
He musters a smile, one with no teeth, barely an upturn of his lips. "Do I know you?"
"I would hope not."
He furrows his brows at that, frown turning his features down. "Ah, excuse me?"
"Don't worry, it's an… inside joke." The other remarks, waving their hand arbitrarily and Caleb follows the path of crimson-dipped claws with narrowed eyes.
"What is the punchline?"
The tiefling blinks, pushing off the wall, and cocking their head at him. "You're an odd one aren't you."
"Am I?"
They laugh at that, chiming and delighted and he's the one left blinking in the wake of wherever this conversation has gone.
"Mollymauk Tealeaf." The tiefling extends their hand. "But I prefer Molly if you don't mind."
"Caleb Widogast," he answers staring at the hand, flexing his own hand at his side, relieved when Molly withdraws without making a fuss, instead turning back to the frame on the wall.
"So, he has a name then?" Molly smirks, looking over at him.
"I do."
They tap the photo, the plink of glass like fracturing ice. "And him, who's he?"
"Bren Aldric Ermendrud." He manages through lips that would rather stay sealed.
He never liked that name, not as much as the others. And he never used it again after Ikithon. He knows the man is still alive too, stuck inside four white walls and hooked up to machines instead of the other way around this time. He supposes aging will do that to anyone. Not that he knows that sentiment personally.
Molly just quirks a brow, looking between him and the sepia-steeped photo with a pinch to their eyes.
"My great-great grandfather…" Caleb continues, the words acrid and uncomfortable on his tongue. "Or something like that."
Molly grins, a cat-snatched-the-cream kind of slide of the lips as they lean in close. "Come to pay respects to the old man's work then?"
It's an effort not to flinch. Not when none of the public even know what Bren did. Everything besides the philanthropy that is. That he should have died in a fire decades and decades ago. But he didn't, everyone else did, and yet, here he is, staring at a photo, taken so long ago he should be as withered and gray as skeletons. Yet, he's sure, colorized, his eyes would still hold.the same blue and his hair the same seam of copper.
"You could say that..."
"You're pretty cryptic, you know that, Caleb." Molly says, looking him over again, and the scrutiny raises the hairs on his nape.
"I am aware." He takes a shuffling step back, smooths his thumb over the pane of his watch and doesn't think about the last time someone looked too closely, found out too much.
"I like it though." They continue. "Makes the mystery worth exploring."
"Mystery?" He asks, the tremulous note all too soon to slip into his voice.
'We'll figure out this mystery, one way or another. Won't we, Bren?'
"Of whether I can get you to agree to go on a date with me by the end of the night or not."
"Oh." He breathes, shoulders falling.
Molly chuckles, tail swiping a lazy arc behind them, and he wonders, for a moment, whether the tiefling had it specifically tailored to accommodate or made the adjustments himself. "Is that a bad 'oh' or a good 'oh', or just an 'oh', oh?"
"All of the above."
Molly cocks their head, dimple pressed into one cheek and fang poking past their lip. "Well, consider me… hopeful then."
"What if i said it was a bad 'oh', then?"
"Then I think I would have to consider you a liar, Mister Caleb."
Caleb wrinkles his nose. "You do not even know me."
"Well I would like to."
"Why?"
"A man comes to a gala, held for the sole purpose of donating money to appear better in the eyes of their peers and he beelines it to the old photo wall without a second glance at the party or even the bloody drinks." Molly gestures to the rest of the hall steadily filling with flashy dresses and flashier guests. "Now, tell me that you wouldn't want to at least get to know his name?"
"Or I would let him go about his business without sticking my nose into it."
Molly raises their eyebrows at that, rocking back on their heels, as untethered and swaying as the rest of the way they holds himself. And the ink crawling up the side of their throat and swirling into their cheek is quite the sight. He never contemplated getting any permanent marks like that, not when they could easily become traceable in a day and age such as this one.
"Ah, apologies, that was… rude of me." Caleb starts, shuffling another step back.
He's learned it's better to apologise with these things, try and snap away the clip of the memory they have of him and turn it as benign as possible, lest they see him again. He's run into one too many scenarios where they've turned all withered and he would be hard pressed to find even a single wrinkle or scar on his skin that he hasn't made careful note of. Those chance meetings never end well, and often result in questions he still can't answer himself.
"No, no, you're fine. It is terribly nosy of me, isn't it?"
Caleb doesn't answer, eyes flicking up for a moment and back down to his shoes, then his watch; the metronomic click a toll in his ear.
"Well, if I haven't completely mucked this--" There's the click of a pen, the quick scratch and scrawl of it, and a second click before a folded note is passed into his line of sight. "Meet me here, Friday afternoon, if that works for you of course. I'd like to try and get to know you a bit better, without all of--" They gesture with a wrinkled nose. "--this."
He accepts it, cautiously, careful not to brush his fingers with theirs. Molly smiles, inclining their head in a nod before turning on their heel with a flick of their tail, glancing back over their shoulder for a moment.
"Have a good evening, Mr. Caleb."
"You as well, Mx. Mollymauk."
The click of heels marks their exit and he holds the note between two fingers, the peak of ink scrawlings visible under the fold. He could crumple it up, toss it, and forget this. Hand in his check and flee this city like he's done countless others. But Nott is here, Frumpkin is here, and he's just settled back into this place after so long and with such little fuss too.
He unfolds the note, blinking at the large heart taking up most of the bottom. There's just the name of a coffee and pastry shop and a small 'M.T.' beside the, rather still, obscenely sized heart. It's Beauregard and Jester's place, the one on the corner of fifth. He can't help but wonder if the tiefling knows the two, if this web he's caught himself in goes further and wider than he could have thought.
'This is a sign,' he thinks, folding the note and tucking it into the breast pocket of his suit jacket. He was never supposed to come back here, not after everything. It hasn't been enough time, it will never be enough time.
And he has an infinity of it, yet still never enough.
The rest of the gala goes smoothly despite the minor hiccup, and the encounter starts to fade back into background noise. No one singles him out, a few lingering stares happen again, but nothing alarming, and he doesn't catch sight of Mollymauk Tealeaf again.
He's exiting out the revolving doors, check handed in, the funds squared away, when his phone rings. The jingle some tune set by Nott who had handed him the newfangled tech, saying he was a young man and that not having one could be dangerous these days. And the irony in being mothered by someone who's only a fraction of your true age isn't lost on him.
"Hallo?"
"How did it go?" The shrill voice cuts through from the others side. He can hear Luc and Yeza talking in the background, the domestic clatter and shift of pans and plates coloring the scene.
"Good. I managed to get one of Hass' relatives to drop in an extra thousand or so on the fund and--" He remarks, slipping his hand into his jacket pocket, looking for the note he made when his fingers brushes something else.
He pulls it free, Nott's chattering dipping and sliding with the rush of cars in the street beside him.
"Caleb? Caleb, are you still there? Hello?"
"Sorry… sorry... I just…I think--" He stares at the ink, lips pursed.
"What is it? Is something wrong?"
"I, ah…" He shakes his head, thumb brushing over the initials pressed into the paper. "I think I have a date on Friday."