Chapter Text
Beau drags herself out of the training ring of the Cobalt Soul, trying to decide if her ribs are bruised or broken; she can breathe, which says bruised, but every step fucking hurts. She uses her staff as a walking stick, breathing carefully, and no one tries to help her. She’s never tried to help them, either, so that’s fair, it makes sense. Instead of going to her bunk and hoping to pass out from pain, Beau turns a corner to go into the archives.
It’s late, the sun so low it doesn’t shine through the windows. There’s only a 2 or 3 people checking on the archive at this point. Beau is very good at avoiding attention, at dodging the obvious spots. At being caught too deep into her crimes. But the worst the Archive could do is cast her out, and she never wanted to be here in the first place, so she slinks through the stacks of books, trying to find something they wouldn’t want her to find.
She finds a collection of journals, their spines so worn they look more like creases. Dragging her finger along each one, feeling the bump and bend, she pauses on one; it’s not large or thin, kinda average as far as journals go. It’s spine is so bent it gives under the slightest pressure, and when she pulls it out it flaps open to a page of words she can’t read. Beau nearly throws it out of frustration. She’s learned a few languages, which is more than most, and this random ass book is outside her understanding.
Instead of putting it away, finding something else forbidden, Beau starts flipping through the pages. She finds more passages in that language. She also finds sketches of odd things; a crooked looking temple, a towering worm creature, an outline of some army too indistinct to tell race or nation. The ink is soft and blurred from time, but the skill is obvious. Beau keeps turning the pages, trying to guess the point of this book.
Then she sees an immaculate drawing of two faces. They’re drawn well, but with a different kind of skill, and Beau thinks of the festivals in Kamorda, the artists who’d draw you for a silver. One of the faces is sharp, harsh, with high cheekbones and thin lips. She - she? Beau’s not sure - is looking somewhere to the left, scowling, and something about it - the shading, the careful crease between her eyebrows - briefly captivates Beau. It feels like a friend she’s long forgotten, but Beau’s had so few friends and she can’t recognize this one.
The second face sends a sharp pain through her chest. This face is softer, rounder, so perfectly cheerful in her cheeks and lips, but her eyes have such weight. Beau catches her hand reaching to touch the edge of the cheekbone of a fucking drawing. She curls that hand into a fist and bites on the meat of it. The more she looks at this drawing, the more she wants to rage and scream and run. Instead she bites harder, until hot iron floods her tongue, and she slams the book shut and scrambles to her room.
Beau sleeps, and dreams of gentle fingers curling between her fingers, and she wakes with tears dripping down her face.
No one asks why when she pushes herself to exhaustion and beyond, that day.
-
The first time Beauregard Lionett met Tori was in a seedy bar neither of them had any reason for being in; Beau for being the child of wealth, Tori for being far too skilled to take jobs from such a place. And Beau was Beauregard Lionett, back then, bound and tied to her family, while Tori was just Tori. Only a couple people in the entire crowd remember their meeting, and according to them, it was something like lust at first sight.
What Beau remembers, long afterwards, is seeing Tori cast her head back and laugh, loud and open. She saw the light play over Tori’s face and the careful curl of her hand around a mug. Something inside her twisted, harsh, like a bolt being turned so far it cracks the wood. And in that moment, mildly drunk, the soft candlelight dancing across skin and sweat, all Beau wanted was to know this woman and make her laugh again.
Tori taught her many things. How to slip inside closing doors, how to open closed windows. How to lie and cheat and steal with a smile. How to hone Beau’s hate into a fine point and use it as a weapon.
Tori did not teach her how to handle the want, the need, of that first night. Her laugh never eased the terrible twisting in Beau’s heart. Her cheeks never felt right under Beau’s fingers and lips.
Beau hates herself for many reasons. Some of them she knows are nonsense, some she might learn to forgive. The one she can never forgive herself for is sitting in her father’s office, him saying that Tori was gone, and the sudden relief that gave her. The sense of freedom.
Tori wasn’t perfect, but she deserved better than that. She deserved better than Beau.
-
It takes months before Beau dares to go searching for that dark corner of the archives. She spends every day swinging her staff, hitting and being hit. She nurses bruises and fractured bones, denying the clerics every time they do their rounds to ask who was hurt. Beau starts cradling her injuries like they were holy, things not to let go, things she had to keep. Once in a while, an elven monk glances over her and makes such a weird face, concern and interest, and Beau walks away as fast as she can.
She couldn’t explain that something deep in her, set in her gut and her ribs, demands she had to hurt and she can't deny it.
One day the injuries and the churning weight get so much she doesn’t know what to do about it. Beau clutches her sternum and walks, carefully, to the archives. She counts her steps until she finds the right row, and counts the books until she finds the right column, counts the height until she finds the right stack. Her hand finds the journal so easily, and as she pulls it out her eyes, blind in the dark, flicker to something else. Beau drops the journal to the side and grabs old parchment. Her grip, normally so hard, softens instinctually, and she takes a bound collection of old paper.
Beau didn’t want to make a light in case someone caught her, but the sudden, terrible need to know drags her to a nearby table. She grabs the lantern and lights it, sets it in front of her collection. She sees the journal, the damned thing that made this her problem, and a bundle of bound and folded letters.
For a long while Beau stares at it, the back of her neck heated and prickling. She wants to touch. She doesn’t want to know. Beau breathes deep and undoes the knot holding the letters. She pulls the top one out and reads it.
‘We’re going to be apart again, soon I think. I heard of the dragon, and I know you can’t help yourself. I wish you could. But you’ll be safe! I believe in you, and everyone at home does too. Just promise you’ll come back when you’re done.’
The signature is smeared but looks like a J-something. The letter has dark spots all over it; either drops of drink or grease or… tears. Beau runs her fingertips, so softly, over the curl of the letters, and a drop of her own tears falls onto the letter. She jerks back and rubs at her eyes, trying to stop herself from crying now that she’s noticed it.
“Hey, Ioun?” Beau says, not too loud in this dark, quiet library. Her voice has gone scratchy and harsh from the weight in her throat but she ignores that. “If this is you sending some kind of fucking message, stop it. Fuck off.” Then she shoves all the pages into their spots and goes back to bed.
-
Beau’s father sends a letter. When it gets to Beau, she knows enough to see that the seal has been cut, delicately, and it has been read before it ever got to her. Who knows how many people have read it. And, sure, that’s what the Cobalt Soul does, they learn and read. This time, they’ve learnt and read Beau’s broken life. They knew about her brother.
That night Beau packs her bags and sneaks out of her room. She tiptoes around the corners she knows the monks focus on. At one point she hops from an open window to avoid a wandering monk, and swings herself down into the first floor. Beau lands amongst the shelves of the library, and after a quick look around she knows exactly where she is.
“If this is your plan to make me a believer, it’s a fucking shit plan,” Beau whispers to Ioun, or no one, probably no one. She grits her teeth, then takes the familiar journal and letters and shoves them into her pack. “I’m stealing this,” she announces, still quiet, “you aren’t giving it to me.” And then she slinks out of the Cobalt Soul.
Once outside, Beau waits for a moment to feel free, or relieved, or troubled. All she feels is expectant, like the next corner has the thing she’s waiting for. She walks far away from the Soul then looks up into the sky and screams, “FUCK YOU!” Several people look out of windows to shush her and she flips them off. Then she bribes her way out of Zadash and starts running. It doesn’t help.