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Beau woke up with the sound of the door opening. The Uthodurnian inn they were staying at, ‘The Sunrise Inn & Tavern’, was old and worn. The floorboards creaked whenever they walked and the door moaned as their intruder stepped outside into the hall and shut the door behind them. She realized suddenly that her bag was sitting open on the floor beside her. She squinted in the darkness and met Caduceus wide open eyes that glowed slightly in the night.
“You alright?” she asked. “You see who it was, what they wanted?” Before he could answer she did a quick headcount. Caduceus was laying against the wall on the floor next to the other bed. Jester and Nott were sleeping together on the second bed with Fjord laying on the floor and snoring quietly right beside them. She sat up as quietly as she could and looked at the other bed but it was empty, the blankets ruffled. She snatched her bag into her lap and started going through it, trying to find what was missing.
“It was Caleb,” Caduceus said. “I think he just needs some time to himself.”
Beau sneered. She searched her bag, pushing things around, pulling things out, but she couldn’t see what was missing. She tossed her bag onto the empty bed as she pushed herself to her feet. “Fuck that. He stole something from me.” Nott snorted and rolled over and Beau froze, trying to keep from waking anyone else. When Nott settled once more, she opened the door slowly to minimize the creaking. “Go back to sleep, I’ll get him.” She shut the door without waiting for an answer.
She shivered a little and considered going back inside to get her new jacket but didn’t want to risk waking anybody up, so she sucked it up and walked barefoot down the hall. There was the sound of a door shutting from downstairs and Beau quietly made her way down. The tavern was empty at this point, save the bartender cleaning the glasses in the sink. It must have been two or three in the morning.
“Evenin’,” he said, staring at his hands with exhaustion in his sagging, wrinkled face.
“Hey,” she greeted. “You see a man come through here? Red-ish hair? About yea tall? Carrying something that doesn’t fucking belong to him?”
The bartender didn’t even looked at her, just gestured with his chin at the door next to the stairs. “Basement.”
She frowned and nodded her thanks as she quietly opened the door. There was another set of stairs and she could see barrels and boxes below, lit up by a single Dancing Light. She didn’t bother being quiet anymore. “Yo!” she called as she marched down the stairs. “The fuck did you take from me, Caleb?” She had a feeling that if she startled him he’d defend himself and she really wasn’t in the mood for third degree burns tonight, so she tried to make her presence known before reaching the bottom step.
He didn’t respond.
She paused on the last step and peeked around the wall. The dancing light was glittering helpfully in the air, lighting up the scene. Caleb was leaning against the wall staring at her general direction with a dopey grin. She spotted a very familiar small, leather sack sitting beside his knee and sighed, rolling her eyes.
“Hello, Beauregard,” he mumbled, turning his eyes up to the light.
“Fucking skein? Really, Widogast? That stuff can kill you. How much did you take?” She marched over and scooped up the bag, checking it. She was still half asleep and she really didn’t want to spend her morning forcing Caleb to throw up in the basement of an ice cold, nearly decrepit tavern but she would if she had to. Luckily, she could barely tell that any was missing, he must have only had one or two pieces. He’d be fine after an hour or so, if memory serves. A little hungover and feeling extra stupid, but alive. She sighed and looked up at his vacant expression. His pupils were blown wide when she leaned into check them but it was almost like he didn’t see her. There was sweat gathering at his hairline and she frowned, gently pushing his curls out of his face. “How you feeling?” she asked. “Don’t leave me hanging, man, I will stick my finger down your throat if you don’t fucking answer me.”
Finally, he turned his eyes up to meet hers. “I feel… sad,” he mumbled.
She sighed sympathetically. “Damn. Buckle in for a bad trip. You have the worst fucking sense of timing, man, we got shit to do tomorrow.” She stood back up and almost started for the stairs, but Caleb reached out and wrapped his shaking hand around her ankle.
“Don’t leave me alone,” he mumbled, his expression blank.
She turned back to him and knelt down to look him in the eye, even though his eyes never really met hers. “Hey. I’m not leaving. You’re going to need water, I’m just running upstairs really quick. I’ll be back in two seconds and we’ll ride this out together, yeah?” Beau pried his grasping fingers off her ankle and jogged upstairs. She walked up to the bartender who was still cleaning the same glass and staring tiredly into space and knocked on the bar to get his attention. He jumped and turned his eyes to look at her. “Hey, my friend ate some bad fish, can I get some water?”
The bartender frowned and reached under the shelf, taking out a bucket and a bottle of water. “All puke goes in the bucket or you’re cleaning it up.”
Beau rolled her eyes but took both things offered to her and ran back down the stairs. Caleb had moved to laying on his back on the floor. He’d summoned a second Dancing Light and both globules were moving around the ceiling like cats, one chasing the other and then switching off. She sat the bucket and the bottle within his reach and then laid down on the ground beside him, staring up at the lights on the ceiling.
“You let me know if you start feeling weird, alright? Well, you’re high, you’re gonna feel weird, let me know if you start feeling bad. If you have to puke, you got a bucket over there. If you puke on me, you die, so try to aim.”
“Why are you helping me?” he mumbled. “I do not want to be helped. I wanted to feel numb for a little while.”
“Skein isn’t the best for that,” she mumbled. She didn’t know how to answer his question, so she didn’t. “It doesn’t make you numb, it makes you feel everything so intensely that emotional wounds and scars feel… physical.”
“ Ja . I am figuring that out.” He was idly rubbing the inside of his left arm with the soft pads of his fingers. She’d need to keep an eye on that to make sure he didn’t start scratching it and tearing up his arms.
“I could have told you that if you had asked for it instead of stealing it in the night.” She paused and breathed out heavily through her nose. “Why did you take the skein, Caleb?” she asked. The lights started to move around aggressively but Caleb’s face never changed.
“I told you, I wanted-”
“No, I meant… Why did you want to feel numb? Why did you feel like this was your best option?”
Caleb didn’t answer right away, but his serene expression turned a little dark. “I had goals… when I left the asylum, when I met Nott, when I joined you all. I had a plan, I had a… I suppose you could call it a dream. In the back of my mind I knew that it was a long shot. I intended to spend the rest of my life trying but there was always a thought in the back of my head that I would die still unsuccessful.”
“Your time travel shit, right?”
Caleb didn’t respond to that and just continued. “But now… with you and with Nott and with the rest… It is actually possible. It is not within my grasp yet but I can see it on the horizon. I can almost reach out for it.”
“That’s a good thing, isn’t it? That’s what you’ve always wanted.”
“Yes. It is. I still want it. So, so much. But there is another want that is quickly rising to match it.”
“What’s that?” Beau rolled over onto her side so that she could look him in the face.
Caleb finally turned and his eyes met hers for the first time that night. “The Mighty Nein. I want to stay, here, with you all almost as much as I want to go back and save my family. The urge to stay is growing with each day and soon I know that I will be forced to choose. I wanted to not think about that, to not think about anything. Just for a night. But now I am thinking about everything and there are ghosts moving around me and whispers I can't place and I hate this." There were tears streaming down his face now but he didn’t acknowledge them so Beau didn’t either.
“Well,” she started, after a few minutes of silence. “Whatever you choose, I’m with you. You won’t be alone in this, we’re all gonna be by your side whether you want us or not.”
“Why?” he asked. “Why would you stay when there is no benefit? What if I choose to go back and all your time with me was for nothing?”
“It’s not for nothing. That’s the thing about family, man. We’re in your corner, always, no matter our own personal feelings about it. We’ll be sad and Nott and Jester will cry, so thanks for that in advance, man, I can’t stand seeing Jester cry. But…” she sighed and rolled once more onto her back to stare at the lights on the ceiling. They were dancing around each other again, like a ballroom pair. “But if it’s what’s best for you, then you can count on us to make it happen.”
“Will you cry? If I leave.”
“I never cry. I sold my tear ducts for pocket change when I was fourteen.”
“You cried when Mollymauk died.”
“That was the last of my tears I’d kept for emergencies, just in case. They’re all gone now, you’re out of luck.”
He chuckled and grinned at her. “I would cry if you were gone.”
“No you wouldn’t. You’d say something sad and poetic at my funeral and then you’ll never think about me again.”
“I said gone,” he started, his eyes clearer than they had been since she’d come down the stairs. The skein must have been wearing off. “Why did you assume you’d be dead?”
“Okay, okay, you’re clearly going to survive this thing, so the therapy session is over. Come on, back upstairs to the others.” She hoped up quickly and pulled him up to his feet as well. He stumbled a bit as the effects hadn’t completely gone away, but he managed to stand on his own. He started towards the stairs but Beau grabbed him by the elbow and spun him around, give him a stern and dangerous frown. “And if you ever steal anything from me again, I’ll kick your ass. I’m not scared to beat up an old man.” He rolled his eyes even though it hurt his brain. He didn’t say anything in response and just pulled his arm from her loose grip. She handed him the bottle of water from the bartender. “Drink all of that before you go to sleep. If there’s any left in the morning I’m pouring it on your head.”
He made a show of sarcastically popping the top off and downing the first few gulps. “Beauregard…” he started when they reached the tavern level. “Thanks. For staying with me.”
She shrugged and avoided his eyes. “Course I stayed. I’m not that much of an asshole.”
Caleb let the conversation drop and just went back to drinking his water. He groaned, suddenly feeling dizzy as the drug finished going through his system. “Ohh… I’m never touching skein again.” Beau just laughed and hauled him to the stairs.