Archive of Our Own ^beta

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Beau does not tell jester about her feelings

She DOES however get a little distant out of fear that Nott will make things weird

“Nott do you know why Beau is being so weird I mean she won’t cuddle or let me do her hair or anything anymore!”

Nott is just like *gears turning and plans forming but before she responds

“do you think maybe she noticed my kinda sorta crush on her maybe? And now…. NOW SHE THINKS I’M ANNOYING! Cause she’s been with so many girls and I never….”

Nott finally gets her to stop but she’s worked up and stressed now and Nott tries to calm jester down but it’s not working until Beau comes in and is like wtf

Nott whispers for jester to just talk to Beau and then leaves their shared room with some kind of awful lie about needing to check in on Caleb

Jester manages to chatter for several minutes before Beau interrupts “Jes, what’s wrong?”

“do you hate me now?”. Beau can’t help her instinct to embrace jester

“no, never…” Jester purrs softly and squeezes Beau tight

“kiss me?” Jester’s voice is small and she looks a little startled that she said it out loud

Oh… That’s nice…

“what?” Beau holds her out a little, searching the blushing blue face

“it’s just I’ve never except that once with Fjord but I was technically drowning so…. And also maybe I kinda wanna know what it’s like to kiss you specifically…”. Jester’s rapid speech was cut off by the warmth of beau’s lips on hers

Oh… That’s nice…

And then the lips are gone and Beau is letting go and stepping back which is NOT what jester wants so she steps forward, crowding Beau against the wall

“Jes…” This time Beau is the one who’s speech is cut off with a kiss

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It was a hard fight for Caleb, he got in a few firebolts at Trent before his perfect memory overwhelmed him.  Beau was the first to notice when Caleb left and his eyes went blank, it wasn’t the absent look of a wizard looking through his familar but rather the absent look of a man so far past shut down that he was nothing but a husk of fear response.  She positioned herself in front of Caleb and called for Jester and Caduceus to fall back and protect him.

The clerics heard Beau’s call and, in a move that they totally hadn’t practiced, Beau ran up and launched off of Yasha’s back to bring her fists down on Trent’s head.  The lightning gloves activated and his spells so focused on the barbarian in front of him that he didn’t notice Beau until he felt the jolt of lightening down his spine.

The strike stunned him for a solid six seconds while blow upon blow rained down upon him.  By the time he regained his faculties he was prone on the floor and surrounded.

“Bren!“  he snapped before letting his voice soften “Please…  Prote-“

The plea was cut off when Caleb stood from where he had curled in on himself and “My name is Caleb” can be heard, just above a whisper, as Trent struggles to move against the effects of hold person.

Caleb walks forward, towards Trent at a measured pace.  His every step deliberate.  “I could torture you, you know….“  he licked his lips as he thought “I could expiriement on you…“ he shrugged Caduceus’s worried hand off his shoulder before kneeling by the head of his former “mentor“ and cupping his cheek with seeming gentleness.  “But these people here?  They’re teaching me to be a good person again”  at that Caleb smiled around the room before turning his attention back to Trent.

“My name is Caleb Widogast“ he repeated “I am not, yet, a good person however…“ and he placed hand on Trent’s chest before casting a spell that sends seven bolts of force into the man’s chest.  As Caleb stands, blood spills from the wizard’s every oriface.

“Caduceus, don’t turn him into anything.  He’ll poison anything he touches even now.“  Caleb stumbles a little as he walks away, until he blacks out.

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It started in the rooms that Jester and Beau shared, the beds moving together in the night was the thing that stood out the most. But Beau assumed Jester had done it in the night, Jester assumed the same about Beau. They didn’t bring it up except to work together to move the beds back where they went before leaving the next morning. They weren’t awake enough to consider how the beds that were so noisy to move between the two of them had been moved by one person in the night without waking the other, so they didn’t talk about that either.

The scent of spun sugar, pastries, paints, and cinnamon began to follow Beau wherever she went. A sketch of Beau’s eyes in her sketchbook winks at Jester one night. Beau was sure that the change was just her imagination and Jester convinced herself that The Traveler’s choice of Beau’s eyes to wink was just a coincidence… Or at least that’s what they told themselves when they decided not to talk about it.

When the bedrolls get rearranged in the dome, without the people on watch seeing, is when everyone notices. But it’s too late really. Caleb insists on packing up and leaving before the sun even rises. Theres no time to even eat. He’s convinced his past is coming for him and his fear is enough to quell any argument.

They make it to an inn in a town that is more a crossroads at the heart of a series of small family farms in the middle of nowhere and they settle in, as a group, for a meal. The weather is nice enough and the inn is too warm for Beau to stretch indoors tonight so she heads outside. Minutes later, Jester follows. She says it’s just to draw and to talk to The Traveler, and because if there’s a mean wizard after them they should buddy up.

When they don’t return after an hour, Caleb sends a message to Beau to check on them. The spell fails. Panic rising even quicker he tries Jester, the spell fails again. To test it he tries Nott who, from her place next to him, is surprised and confused. The spell works. The girls shouldn’t be so far away that he can’t contact them, they were going to stay close… Caleb reports his discovery and the party hurry outside, drinks abandoned and chairs toppled in their rush.

The sight that meets them isn’t what they feared, but that doesn’t make it better. Beau and Jester are there, and they seem to be as physically well as they had been when they left the tavern. The problem is that they are confined in force field, tinted green and only clear enough to make out the softly swaying figures of the girls, in an embrace and dancing slowly as something drifts around them… Are those flower petals? And where is that music coming from?

Caleb sees Fjord reaching out to touch the magical barrier but not in time to stop him. His hand makes contact but, instead of being thrown back or burned or killed… or even flinching, Fjord seems to relax. The concerned tension doesn’t leave his face but the obvious pain from injuries that can only heal so much with magic melts away.

“Feels weird…“ the half orc muses “Like Jessie’s healing but… more.“

At that, Caleb thinks he might understand. He casts detect magic and smiles when the nearly blinding aura of the barrier reads as power from another plane. His smile widens when, as Beau and Jester lean closer and closer until their lips press together, the barrier falls. The flower petals vanish and the music is silent, but Nott is cheering loudly beside him and then Jester is running over and they’re high fiving. Fjord just nods at a blushing Beau.

“Let’s go inside and we can discuss what just happened, ja?“

The group agrees and, as they make their way inside, blue fingers lace with brown.

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He was afraid, for his life and his son, during the attack. And after, for so many days.... weeks... an endless journey through tunnels and across a river, over roads and mountains he was dragged. Yeza mourned as he walked, or rode in the cart depending on the whims of his captors. He mourned his son, his home, his work, and still he mourned the wife that he lost to goblins. There had been goblins in the group that caught him and a few even traveled in his guard and, when they saw how he flinched from them even more than the others, they tormented him with this.

Then there was the cell. It was dark and he couldn’t see much, but it was better than the cage at the goblin camp... At first. Until those who questioned him decided he knew more than he was telling. He didn’t and he said as much but the scant meals that had come at random intervals, mostly just a few mouthfuls of bread and a bowl of water that tasted vaguely of meat of something earthy, stopped coming. Then water stopped too. After a while of deprivation and isolation, Yeza lost track of time... and of himself.

Some time after, when time meant nothing but an increase in the ache of hunger that grew within into sharp pains that left him to gnaw on the leather of his vest just for something in his belly, he heard a voice. He saw nobody and the voice was in his mind more than his ear, it asked where he was and mentioned his wife, and with the pain of grief and the resurgence of fear in his heart he could only answer “I can’t.” Of course it wasn’t in answer to the voice, just to the thought of losing his mind, as it was all he had left.

More time passed, it must have, and Yeza sank deeper into the daze. When the voice came next he had decided to believe in it if only to keep some level of hope alive until the cramping of his empty stomach overtook him, so he coughed as prompted in response. And again the voice came but, unlike before, the guards could not be heard down the hall. Maybe they were there, maybe they weren’t. But it didn’t matter either way. He answered her questions as best he could and asked one of his own.

An answer to his question came some time later. The voice spoke again, after a bit of a hullabaloo outside the cell, but it was in the room with him. The voice that had spoken in his mind was in front of him. The woman’s voice was loud, so loud that he flinched, and she was talking about his wife... About Veth. Veth was dead and he had been dying. Yeza supposed that he had died, and that the afterlife was very strange.

His Veth was a goblin now, in the afterlife, but she was still the same person and she still loved him and it probably wasn’t the real soul of Veth anyways... But this version loved him and he was just glad to be free and with people so kind, if a bit odd, so he went with them and into the darkened city of whatever afterlife he had found for himself.

The voice, Jester, healed him a bit and he ate as much as he could and then some. He slept. He shopped... When Veth suggested a tattoo it was a surprise but, considering that he was dead, he agreed. It hurt, like being stabbed with a needle so many times and also having ink inserted into his skin.

Eventually, of course, he realized that he had survived. He had survived, he had his son and a safe place to live, and his wife was alive. Things weren’t great but things were ok and he hoped that they could get even better.