Work Text:
For the first week or so, the man – Caleb was his name – had barely spoken . He moved forward, always, with a grim determination, acknowledging her with a nod or quiet instruction maybe four times a day, but very little besides. Nott had run with him from that godforsaken jail cell and followed and followed and at this point she didn’t even know if he wanted her around anymore, just slipped herself in, quietly behind - watched his back; he hadn’t told her to go quite yet.
It wasn’t that he came across as stoic or silent by nature. He was an intelligent man, but not a strong one, she could tell from the minute she’d seen him, with her own eyes blown wide with terror and her nose – her goblin nose – telling her that this one was weak, this one she could kill. She wasn’t used to smelling fear on others, acrid and stinging, but this broken boy ahead of her, he wore that stench like an armour.
No, she wasn’t used to it. Not quite yet.
Maybe some twisted part of her liked it, liked knowing that some strange, serious man who could pull cats out of the sky and send lights floating around her head could be just as frightened as she was, somehow, could fail where she might succeed. (That maybe he needed her, just a little bit.)
But he was distant and ill-mannered, if not completely socially inept, never looking her in the eye or saying thank you, sleeping a ways off from her each night with that weird thread strung around him like some bare barrier between them, knees pulled up and head down. Frightened.
They shared very little, this quiet team of theirs. She remembered he’d gone into a nearby village one day whilst she’d hid on the outskirts and waited. He came back with bread and dry meat, stolen likely but still some semblance of fresh and god she was hungry. But he never did offer any, wrapped it up and hid it away, kept it to himself. Of course he did. For all he knew she’d been living like this all her life. Goblins eat worms and dirt and babies, that’s what she’d learned as a child. He shouldn’t think any different. She didn't blame him; didn’t steal from him; didn’t ever feel any less pathetic.
So she went hungry most days, but refused to complain, too afraid to intrude or upset him. After all, she was weak and it’s never better to be alone. He could protect her.
(It was something to be said, though; he was weak too.)
The small goblin, ‘Nott’ she had called herself, was nothing like Caleb expected. In the short time of knowing her, what struck him was how she seemed so… Young. Or perhaps that was the wrong word for it. New, new was the word. Like she’d been dropped into this body two weeks ago and thrust into the outside world without a clue. She was clumsy, she didn’t know how to survive on her own, stuck to his side and hung onto his every word. He would say she was a liability and, well, she could be, but there was something about her, something he couldn’t quite understand. She was just so clever, so quick, coasting by on natural instincts and absorbing it all like a dry sponge sunk in a river.
He noticed too, how she watched him so intently, night after night without fail as he set up his alarm, making it so he’d at least have some forewarning if she tried to slit his throat while he slept. Unsettlingly, it felt as if she saw everything sometimes - curious, intelligent, but silent.
The first several days he paid her little mind, assumed she would largely take care of herself, that they were simply two arschlöcher heading in the same direction for a time and had each thought a small and temporary partnership could be mutually beneficial. He hadn’t thought for one second that she could be weak, might rely on him, so sure that he would have abandoned her by now if that was ever the case, but he hadn’t. Why?
It was foolish, most definitely. He’d tried being soft, learned to be hard; everything fell apart anyway.
No matter, either way he couldn’t deny it, she was strange, intriguing. Fast and quick and flighty. All twig-bones and sharp edges with a heartbeat so fast he could hear it if he listened close enough in the night; incessant in every sense of the word. She froze up in heavy rain, spoke softly, could read and write. Caleb was afraid of very few things more than he was questions, answers, curiosity that could be thrown right back in his face if he was stupid enough, but he couldn’t deny he had many, for her, for this strange little girl he’d stumbled across and somehow taken under his wing.
It was the second time he’d left her alone to head into a nearby town for food that he felt something change. The first time, they had both still been raw and afraid after fleeing for their lives, seated in the certainty that neither wished to be alone just yet. He’d told her to hide and wait and she did; he came back with bread and meat and never noticed her staring, mouth watering.
This time, however, he said very little as he turned and left her. It wasn’t as if she was obligated to stay, quite the opposite, he was sure there had been a silent agreement that soon they would part ways and all would be well. So no, he didn’t expect to see her again; she could scarper off into the forest while he charmed some baker out of their old, rotten fruit or a stale loaf of bread and neither would suffer any for it.
Still, against all sensible judgement, he returned, followed the track from the town square out to the rolling hills and away but his legs and feet took him right back to the same spot he’d left her, hurrying along, his heart in his throat just a bit, because he’d been gone and what if she was hurt?
But she’d left, by now. She must have. She never had a reason not to.
Except, as he found when he finally reached the forest’s outskirts where the birdsong was the loudest, she hadn’t. She hadn’t. There she was, perched in the same place he’d left her, loyally seated and favouring him with a faint smile as he crested over the hilltop. For some reason he couldn’t quite fathom yet, well, he was glad.
That night she curled up by a tree stump some ways off from the fire, giving him space, accommodating and kind, but hesitant. He shifted on his feet, stalled for a moment and doubted himself, but he was looking at her now, really looking, and she was so small, so fragile. Her spine was visible, hard ridges lined up along her back and her shoulder blades jutted outward, so sharp they looked as though they might split her skin. She was balled up like a cat, shaking ever so slightly in the frosty air, and something desperate stirred in his chest, something warm, protective.
“Here,” was all he said, and he held a piece of bread out in her direction as her ears twitched and pointed upwards, her form unravelling and turning to face him. She blinked once, twice, then her eyes swivelled to look at the meal in his hands. A moment passed and her face was unreadable, but eventually she stood up and reached out, taking it from him slowly as her nose twitched at the smell before she quickly bit down into it; four mouthfuls and it was gone.
“Thank you,” was all she said back, slightly muffled as she wiped her mouth on her arm and looked slightly embarrassed as they both stood awkwardly for a moment until, eventually, Caleb cleared his throat and spoke again.
“Ah, well, we are partners now, ja?” he paused, “sharing is important.” Struggling to look directly at her, his eyes were fixed to the ground, but when he finally turned his head upward he saw that she was smiling softly.
“Partners. You and me, huh?” she said, more of a question than perhaps it should have been. He returned the smile, awkward but genuine.
“Of course. You and me.”