Archive of Our Own

Caleb imagines himself in a box. 

He imagines it often, like a reflex or a coping mechanism he picked up somewhere he tries not to remember. 

When the world is too big, make it smaller. 

When his thoughts are too loud to hear, trap them in a tiny, quiet place.

It’s not hard to do here. His cell is made up of four dingy walls-- one a row of bars that lead out into darkness, a low ceiling, and a stone floor he traces every day. 

There’s scratches etched into the dried muck on the wall to count the days. He scratches them every morning, when the sunlight through his window reaches the edge of the door. There’s still little corners of his mind that feel broken, but this helps. Imagining himself in boxes, counting days, counting meals-- two every other day, an evening bowl of gruel on the others.

He’s curled up against the day-marked wall when he hears her for the first time. He can’t see her, of course, but a silver flask slips between the bars of his cell. 

Her voice is rough, but from exhaustion or disuse, he can’t tell. “Need a drink?”

He blinks, wondering if his mind has finally snapped or if this is someone’s cruel attempt at a joke. 

She speaks again, “I hear you sometimes, you know. At night. You talk in your sleep.”

Caleb frowns and reaches out to shove the flask away. “Leave me alone.”

“Drink.” He nearly jumps when a tiny green hand pushes it back towards him. “It’ll help.”

He doesn’t want to take it but he does anyway, even if it’s mostly just to sate his own curiosity. The better part of his brain is busy calculating the risks as he snatches it from the ground and makes quick work of the lid and tips it back into his mouth.

Would poison be better than rotting for another month in this prison?

Probably.

The liquor is stronger than he expects. Fire shoots down his throat and he sputters. He’s busy coughing into his collar when the woman next door laughs. 

“It’s not the tastiest stuff, but at least it will take the edge off.”

He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Take the paint off the walls, more likely.”

“That too.” 

His spine pops as he scoots forwards towards the bars, slipping his arm through and holding the flask out into the darkness. He has to rattle it before he hears more movement. A slim, bandaged arm reaches through the cell next to him and retrieves it. 

Small, green-skinned, and female. He files the information away for whatever he may need of it. 

“Thank you,” Caleb says, watching her arm disappear into her cell. “I didn’t expect to find kindness here.”

She is quiet for a moment before she responds again. “I didn’t expect to want to give it.”

He chuckles despite himself. 

“What’s your name?”

He inhales. A list of pseudonyms rifles through his mind, but it doesn’t feel quite right. He’d never been one of particularly upstanding morality, made clear in his current situation. Made clear in the thick scent of smoke that comes billowing up from a memory.

“Caleb,” he says suddenly, trying to shake himself of it. “My name is Caleb.”

Perhaps he doesn’t deserve her kindness or anyone else’s, but if he can give kindness in return for even a moment . . . surely a name would be harmless, right?

“Caleb,” she repeats. She tests it slowly, and he finds he doesn’t mind the sharpness her mouth adds to the sound of it. “Caleb, I’m Nott.”

He pauses. “You’re not what?”

She sighs. “No, not not . My name is Nott. With two T’s.”

“Oh.” 

“It’s nice to meet you, Caleb.”

He smiles softly, though he knows she can’t see it. “It’s nice to meet you too, Nott.” 

They settle into silence. He wants to talk more, as foolish as he knows it is. Instead though, he slides back across the cell and leans against the wall opposite of his homemade calendar. The sun had disappeared above his tiny window hours ago, and he can make out a tiny sliver of pink sky. 

Gruel soon , he muses. His stomach growls in response. 

To pass the time, he begins counting his tallies on the wall again. 

He makes it to two hundred and thirty-three before Nott speaks again.

“I’m going to get us out of here, Caleb,” she whispers. “Soon.”

He shakes his head, forgetting he’s alone. “You’ll get yourself killed, I’m not worth it.”

“I can’t do it by myself.”

“I am hardly skilled in combat.”

“But you know magic, right?”

A slow chill crawls down his spine. He crosses his cell in a few short strides, and presses himself into the corner nearest her. His voice is hushed, almost dangerous. “And how is it you know that?”

“You mumble spells in your sleep. Something arcane hums off you. I feel it too.”

Caleb stares dumbly into the dark. “You are also an arcane user?”

“A little. Not much, not enough to be of use.” She pauses and seems to step closer. She whispers, “But I want to know more.” 

The desperate edge to her voice brings the smell of smoke back. He blinks and he’s before his burning home, listening to the screams of his parents inside. 

“Good,” Trent cooes, hand rested firmly on Caleb’s shoulder. “You serve the empire well, Bren.”

Caleb thumps his fist against his chest. There is something wrong with his tongue, a scream rising in his chest but it never comes. He’s not sure why he wants to scream at all. “No dissidents. Only loyalty.”

A beam in his former home cracks and the roof collapses into a pile of embers. Sparks float up into the sky, bright and burning against the stars. He wants to reach out and touch one. He doesn’t notice as the screaming stops. 

“Caleb?”

He takes an involuntary step back, expecting ash to rain down upon him. There is no ash. Only iron bars and darkness and the distant light of a torch coming down the hall. He swallows. “ Ja , I’m fine. There’s a guard coming.”

She pauses. “Don’t forget what I said. We’re getting out of here.” 

He hears her skitter back and further into her cell before he can reply.

It takes them two weeks to come up with a halfway decent plan, and it involves his cat.

“You have a cat?!” 

“ Ja .”

“What’s its name?”

“His name is Frumpkin.”

Nott sniffs indignantly. “Why haven’t I seen Frumpkin?”

“He is my familiar and he stays in a different plane.”

“So you don’t have a cat?”

He thumps his head against the wall between them. “I do have a cat, and I can summon him anytime I want. He just stays hidden since I don’t think they allow cats in jail.”

“Fair enough,” she says, though the tone of her voice still sounds unconvinced. 

He raises his hand and snaps, imagining a space in her cell for Frumpkin to apparate. The planes between worlds shift slightly, a blip in time, and his cat lands with a soft pat on the other side of the wall.

Nott lets out a startled, hoarse yelp. 

“Nott, Frumpkin. Frumpkin, Nott.”

Frumpkin meows, a cordial air about it. 

Nott chuckles nervously. “Good kitty, kitty.”

A tiny bit of warmth spreads through Caleb’s chest, and he smiles. Before he can think on it though, he snuffs it out with the clearing of his throat. “If you are convinced of Frumpkin’s existence, I do have a plan.”

“You’re going to have Frumpkin claw out all the guards’ eyes in their sleep.”

“No.”

“Oh.”

He sighs. “If Frumpkin can get you a piece of wire or something, you can pick the locks, ja ?”

“Of course,” Nott says. “But how is your cat going to get me a lockpick?”

Frumpkin makes a low noise, almost like a scoff. 

Caleb snorts. “I can tell him to do things and he does them.”

“Like a dog?”

“Like magic.”

Nott hums, interested. “He really is a good kitty then.”

“Very much so.”

It is almost terrifying to him, how easy she is to talk to. Not that their conversations had ventured to anything particularly personal or deep, but all the same. It had been a long time, and he felt himself forgetting he had to hide. 

Banter is fun , he decides, listening to her soft, even murmurs as she pets Frumpkin. I had almost forgotten.

“I like this plan, Caleb,” Nott says. “You’re very smart.”

“Do not compliment me yet, we are still behind bars.”

“Not for long, though. I have a good feeling about this.”

“Well,” Caleb says, turning to the window to watch the moon reappear from behind a veil of clouds, “I hope you’re right, my friend.”

“One more night,” Nott reassures.

“One more night.”

The plan almost goes off without a hitch.

Caleb sits in the center of his cell, legs crossed and back straight as he channels through Frumpkin. He’ll never not be unnerved by the sheer strangeness of Frumpkin’s vision. Everything is muted and hazy, but brighter at the same time, like swimming through sunlight. And of course there’s the fact that everything is ridiculously tall and far away.

But the bit of wire had been retrieved-- an odd, rusty taste fills Caleb’s mouth-- and as Frumpkin turns the corner towards the cells, Caleb returns to his own body.

“He’s coming with the wire.”

Nott shifts nervously. “Did anyone see him?”

Caleb stands as Frumpkin finally came into view. “I don’t think so.”

Frumpkin slips into Nott’s cell, and Nott makes quick work of the lock. Even despite having to do it all backwards and blind, it only takes a few seconds before he hears the padlock clank against the stone floors.

Caleb presses his face between the bars as her door swings open. She steps out into the dim hall. The breath rushes from his lungs. 

He is not sure what he expected, but a goblin is not it.

Nott is small and scary and, as she turns to look at him for the first time, incredibly terrified of what he must think of her.

He shakes the surprise as quickly as he can and offers her the best grin he can manage. “You did it! Well done.”

She blinks, eyes gold and split by a slit pupil. “It was nothing.”

“If it were nothing, you’d still be in that cell.”

She stands awkwardly in the hall for a moment, and he takes the time to truly take her in. She is tinier than he imagined. Perhaps on an incline she might meet his hip. When she feels his eyes on her, she shifts uncomfortably on her feet and flips a hood he hadn’t noticed over her head. Her ears still protrude from slits through the hood, but her face disappears into shadow.

“You--,” he bites his tongue. Don’t have to hide. But that’s a stupid thing to say and he’s not sure why he thinks it at all. “Thank you.”

Still, she nods as if she knows what he meant. Not that she agrees or trusts him, but she appreciates the sentiment. “No problem.”

He takes a step back and gestures towards his cell door. Frumpkin meanders around Nott’s ankles and slips between the bars to settle at Caleb’s feet, waiting. 

Nott moves towards the door, and even quicker than her own, the lock on the falls to the ground. When the door swings open, her hand is stretched up towards him, green and shaking and hopeful. He hesitates before he takes it. 

There’s no reason he should trust her.

And yet. . . he wants to. It’s a dull ache in his bones: to trust, to be trusted in return. 

So he takes her hand and she smiles, beneath the hood. Her smile is broad and sharp-toothed, perhaps too close to a snarl to anyone else but him, but he returns it all the same. 

“We should go,” she says. “They’ll come looking for us soon.”

Us . He nods without replying, afraid his voice is close to betrayal.

But it all crumbles when a shout comes from the end of the corridor. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”

“Uh oh.”

Caleb drops Nott’s hand and looks around frantically. For something, anything. His gaze lands on the hay strewn across the floor. It’s old and piss-soaked, but hopefully it’ll do.

“Here goes nothing,” he mutters. Without a second thought, he throws his hand out and imagines an ember.

Then a spark, then a flame.

Fire skips across the hay and bursts forth, a wall forming between them and the guard. Caleb has to swallow the bile that wretches up his throat.

Nott shrieks, clawing at his coat to pull him back. 

The guard skids to a halt. They pause before turning on their heel and running. “Fire! There’s a fire!”

“That was lucky!” Nott tugs him again, dragging him back with more strength than he would’ve guessed she was capable of. “But we have to go!”

Caleb gulps. “ Ja . Ja , that’s probably a good idea.”

She takes his hand again and they bolt the opposite direction from the guard and the flames. Frumpkin yowls, close at their heels.

The jail is almost a maze, but they manage to find their way to an exit. There are people running about and shouting, pointing at the roof that now blazes or the smoke that billows out from the interior. 

I should be used to this , Caleb thinks. A cinder falls on his shoulder and he has to reach up to pat it out. I hate that I should be used to this.

When they finally clear the haze and push past the crowd gathering, Caleb collapses to the ground in behind an inn and vomits. There’s not much in his stomach to even come up, but he spends the better part of ten minutes dry-heaving into the cracked summer dirt. 

Frumpkin circles the two of them patiently. Nott stands awkwardly to the side, unsure if she should look away or offer comfort. She lifts her hand once before dropping it back to her side.

When he finally feels his stomach settle, Caleb leans back on his knees and stares up into the sky. Bright and blue and blinding. The most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. Sweat beads across his forehead and he’s never been so happy to feel the sun.

Laughter, pure but unpracticed, bubbles up from his chest. He can’t stop himself. Before he knows it, he’s cackling with his arms around his ribs and tears running streaks through the dirt on his face. 

Nott must think him mad. 

He definitely is.

He wipes his eyes and finds her watching with uneasy curiosity. 

Pointing up to the sky, he says through giggles, “Sun!” 

Nott looks up, just to be sure. “Sure is.” She looks back at him, hand pressed over his mouth trying to stifle more laughter. 

A slow, hard-fought grin breaks out across her face. 

“We’re free, Nott. And we are standing in the sun.”

He must look and sound ridiculous, because she can’t fight it any longer. She breaks out into giggles too. 

The two of them huddle together, blocks away from a burning prison, around a pile of gruel and dirty water vomit, laughing like maniacs.

Nott doubles over with her shoulders shaking. Her laugh is shrill and wheezy but he feels he could listen to it forever. For a moment, she looks younger than she seems. It’s a tiny bit of joy, a glimmer of hope and adrenaline that he knows will fade all too fast.

So he revels in it, and imagines for the first time that it might not be so bad to live outside of a box.