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“Caleb,” Jester calls, skipping up to the front of their group to walk at his side, her shoulder bumping his, “Do you know where, like, everything is here?” He smiles to himself a bit.
“A little. It’s a big city and we didn’t wander very far. Right around the Academy, though, I know like the back of my hand.” She squints at him like she’s trying to read his mind.
“Because of how you have a perfect, magic memory?” He scoffs, turning away slightly just to hide his face. His eyes catch on a garden he thinks he remembers, the colors just the same as they used to be.
“It isn’t magic. Just memory. Just like I’m sure you know every creaky floorboard and hiding place in your mother’s home.” She giggles and smiles and that’s its own reward. It's a good distraction from the rising anxiety in his gut. And everything is fine. It is. The last time they were in Rexxentrum, he was terrified that any move he made would alert Trent and his puppets. He felt a breath away from collapse every single moment.
Not so much anymore though. After seeing Trent and Sassa and Eadwulf, he was let go. They knew, more than anyone else, that he was a criminal and a monster, but he’d remained free. He’d ended the war and walking through the city doesn’t feel safe exactly, but it feels alright. He misses Veth.
They make their way towards the Academy, and the burden of remembering starts to grow. A broken cobblestone that he used to trip on when he had his head in a book that’s been fixed in the 18 years since, a back alley they’d hid in when they stayed out too late.
A bench where they’d-
“I need you both to promise me something.” Astrid was lying across both of their legs, she had been since they tried to get up an hour ago and she forbid it. She stared up into Bren’s face with the unmatched intensity that he loved her for.
“Promise you what?” he asked, running his fingers through her hair. He loved her hair, soft and fine with a color like spun gold. He would never say that to her though, she’d never let him live it down.
“Promise me we won’t grow apart,” she said, solemn. Eadwulf chuckled.
“What is that even supposed to mean, Astrid?” he said through his laughs. She smacked him on the arm, but she smiled too. It was an uncertain smile, but it was there and it was hers.
“Things are changing in our lives. Big things. And I can’t do it without both of you. I won’t.” They went silent for a while as if they were listening for the rumble of the world shifting around them. But they didn’t hear that, just the quiet bustle of the city and their school and the sounds of each other’s breathing.
“I promise,” Bren said. He stroked his thumb along her cheek. “We’ve come so far together, and we’re stronger now for having endured it. What’s one more step?” She let out an audible sigh.
“Wulfie?” Eadwulf looked at the both of them and there was a flicker of fear in his eyes. They didn’t say anything, how could they? Why break his strength more than they had to when he was protecting all three of them? He laughed again, brittle.
“Promise.”
“Hey, man.” Beau puts a hand on his shoulder and gently turns him to look at her. “You alright?”
“Ja. I’m fine. It’s been a while.” He tears his gaze away from the bench and looks back at Beau. She looks him up and down the same way she does when she’s trying to tease a lie out of someone they're interrogating.
“Did you… like it here?” she asks, her keen eyes trained on him. He swallows and considers the question for a moment.
“I would not be who I am today if I had not come here,” he says. He expects her to tell him that he hasn’t answered her question, that he’s dodging the truth, but her eyes go soft for a moment. She nods at the building in front of them.
“Which one was your dorm?” He breathes a sigh of relief. It’s just barely visible from where their standing, so he points it out.
“See that tower there. On the other side-”
"Bren?" Someone pounded on his door, louder than felt necessary.
"Ja?" he answered, stumbling out of bed. He leaned heavily on the wall and unlocked the door. He opened it to Eadwulf's worried face.
"You're hurt," Wulf said. He stared at the wound on the side of Bren's head that was still sluggishly bleeding. The world swam and the floor tilted under his feet.
"I'm fine," Bren replied, squinting against the lantern light seeping in from the hallway. "Deserved this one."
"I won't argue that. Just-- Sassa will kill me if I don't fix you." Eadwulf pushed past him and sat down on Bren's bed, the bedframe creaking under his weight. He pulled a medicine kit out of his school bag.
"Come here," he said, his voice full of emotion that Bren didn't have the brainpower to parse. He went. Wulf got out gauze and alcohol and some small bandages. He was gentle as he cleaned away the tacky, drying blood. The smell of the alcohol was sharp and stinging and made him want to throw up.
"You want to throw up because you have a concussion, Dummkopf," Wulf said softly, capping the bottle and smoothing out the bandages he'd placed. Oh, he hadn’t realized he said that out loud. Without the sharp pain of the cut, he could feel the exhaustion taking over, a crash he knew all too well. Bren slumped forward into his friend's arms.
"Alright," Wulf whispered, bringing one hand up to cradle the back of his aching head, "alright."
“Sorry. Memories,” he says when he realizes he’d trailed off in the middle of a sentence. Jester rests her chin on his shoulder and he feels his muscles tense on instinct, but he doesn’t shake her off.
“Bad memories?” Beau asks. She clenches her hand into a fist and he almost laughs. He doesn’t deserve them.
“Some. Good ones, too.” He doesn’t intend it, but it comes out as a whisper. The wind rushes in the trees and he wonders for a second if they heard him.
“Were they like, super strict?” Jester asks, looking up at the austere towers and archways. He shrugs. He misses Veth, he wishes that she was there holding his hand. He chides himself for it though because she is where she should be, happy, and with her family.
“Maybe a little bit” he replies. “There were many rules, but they were giving us so much that we did not have a place to complain.” His eyes trace over the stonework and he has to shake off a shiver.
“What kind of rules?” Beau says.
“Mostly about where we could and couldn’t go, when we could do things, who we could see, and when.” His breath catches in his chest. Beau snickers.
“You aren’t supposed to be here,” she said, running her fingers slowly up and down the bare planes of his back. She had soft hands, not callused and scarred like his.
“I know,” he mumbled against the warm skin of her stomach, too sleep-drunk and happy to think about all the bad things that might happen if they got caught. The world was so quiet that he could hear her heartbeat and each and every breath.
“If someone comes in…” she trailed off, playing with the fine hairs at the nape of his neck, swirling them around her fingertips. He grabbed clumsily for an old, worn fleece blanket she’d brought from Blumenthal. He rubbed it between his fingers and formed an illusion over himself, a pile of more blankets. She laughed, and he could feel it against his cheek.
"You're stubborn, Brennie." She scratched her fingernails along his scalp. He looked up at her, struggling to keep his eyes open.
"Do you want me to go?" he asked. She shook her head. He closed his eyes and settled back down, listening to her breathe.
The Mighty Nein came to a stop at the edge of the campus, unconsciously forming a protective circle around their wizard. Through the big windows, they could see lectures, big halls full of bright-eyed students scribbling furiously in their notebooks. Jester giggles, as bright and bubbly as ever.
“Can you believe Fjord wanted to go here?” Fjord gives half a chuckle.
“That seems like so long ago. Well,” he gestures towards the classrooms, “I don’t think I would have been able to cut it at wizard college anyway. I mean, I’ve peeked into your spellbook, Caleb. When I do magic it just sort of happens. You do… math?” Caleb ducks his head and rubs at the ink and ash on his fingertips and feels the urge to pick at his skin.
For the n-th time today, he misses Veth and longs to hear her voice, saying something snippy to Fjord. He doesn’t deserve her.
“You underestimate yourself, Fjord. Any of you could do what I do, I’m just the one who chooses to do it.” He pulls a piece of amber from his coat pocket and turns it between his fingers. He can see the professor in the nearest classroom tracing out a sigil. It looks to be based in Transmutation, and his heart jumps a little. The board looks chipped at the corner and he knows that room, he-
They weren’t really supposed to be in the classrooms on weekends, but they were never locked and if you erased your work from the chalkboard before Miresen, no one would stop you. Bren and Wulf had been working on a single proof for days, and they were certain -certain- that if they could make it work, everything would slot into place.
Their hands were covered in chalk dust from writing and erasing and correcting, writing and erasing and correcting. The runes and sigils they’d drawn were messy and imperfect, but the concepts made sense. They worked largely in silence for hours, stopping the other with a tap on the shoulder and a correction to whatever new error they’d made.
“Wait,” Wulf said, his voice echoing in the large, empty lecture hall. “If we just-” He scrubbed out half of one of the first runes in the series and replaced it, then the next one, then the next. Bren almost gasped. He rushed up to help, and they both watched as the glyphs cascaded into place. They finished and the final sigil glowed slightly. They just stared at it for a moment, beaming
Wulf laughed, victorious, and pulled Bren into his side. Bren rested his head on his friend’s shoulder and they marveled, not just at the magic. At themselves.
“Ooh, do they have a big library, Caleb?” Jester asks. He takes a deep breath and smiles, and it feels fragile.
The library. Those are happy memories, ones he is reminded of with every new library he sees. This place, it never leaves him, really. It’s in the way he transcribes spells, in the feel of components in his fingertips, in all the tiny moments when his hands shake and it hurts to breathe and he wants his friends and that doesn’t mean the Mighty Nein.
“Ja. It’s on the other side of the campus. I could walk you there if you like.” Beau groans.
“We can’t go to a library, we just came from a library. Everything’s a fuckin’ library these days. You said that you knew a place where we could get fucked up.”
“I would like to get fucked up,” Yasha says in that soft, sad way of hers. Beau whoops and claps her on the back. Caleb shrugs and tries not to let go of his smile.
“It’s on the way-”
“We need to sleep,” Wulf mumbled softly into the pages of his book, head down on the table.
“We have work to do,” Bren replied. He blinked his eyes as hard as he could to try to clear them of the blur that had been overtaking his vision. He scratched out a section of his notes and started re-writing them.
“We also need to have spells tomorrow, Dummkopf, it’s a practical exam.” Wulf picked his head up just enough to close his book and then rested his face in his arms. He turned to look at Bren and Astrid, wincing as his neck cracked loudly.
“Sassa agrees with me,” he said with a tired laugh. Bren looked down and saw Astrid curled up into his side, the textbook she'd been reading held snugly under her chin, fast asleep. The tension she so often held was gone from her face and she looked calm in a way she didn’t often look anymore. He tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear.
“We need to sleep,” Bren whispered, putting his notes away as best he could without jostling her. Wulf chucked a pencil at them and Astrid woke with a start.
He feels his breath start to catch in his throat as they walk. It isn’t the panic he’s so used to, the kind that eats at his focus and burns so hot that he has no choice but to flee his body. It’s a soft kind of fear, the type that makes his fingers buzz as the memories come faster and stronger than the world outside.
He’s not upset, he’s not. He’d just forgotten how dense this place was. How every square inch is tiled with a memory that he does not have the courage to let go.
Bren sat with his back to the wall, gazing out the large picture windows that lined the hallway. They looked out over the freshly cut grass and stonework of the central courtyard, lit by the orange glow of the last light before dusk.
He put down the plate in his hands and drew his knees to his chest as he watched the sun slowly set, the last few students studying in the courtyard make their way inside. It looked like he’d always dreamed it would, warm and quiet and perfect. Her footsteps startled him out of his reverie.
He grabbed the plate, scrambled to his feet, and turned to face her. Her hair was pulled up messily and she looked exhausted, but she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. The fading light cast her in gold and she looked exactly as valuable as he knew she was.
“Alles Gute zum Geburtstag,” he said, holding out the plate. On it was a single slice of chocolate cake and two forks. It had cost him the last few coppers of his savings, but it was worth it to see the bright flicker of happiness in her tired eyes.
They didn't have much time left for these small pleasures. There were more important things, but he would take joy while he could.
“Stupid boy,” she said, a smile creeping across her face. She grabbed one of the forks and took a bite. Her eyes fell shut and she let out a little happy hum he hadn’t heard in a while. “I love you.”
“Me or the cake?” he asked with a chuckle. She shoved him in the shoulder and snatched the cake out of his hands.
"Stupid," she said, rolling her eyes. She leaned in for a kiss, sweet with frosting and fondness.
There is a small part of his brain, a childish, traitorous part, that tells him that he deserves the good memories along with the bad. It tells him that he was a child who loved his country and his friends and his family and knowledge. That he couldn’t have possibly known where it would end. Who could blame him, that part of his brain asks, for wanting more?
It’s a part of him that the Mighty Nein have been tending, whether they knew it or not. He loves them all so much, but he hates them for it. Because allowing himself the happy memories means feeling the bad ones fully. It means thinking that, just maybe, he does not deserve to burn.
Caduceus says that no one deserves anything. Young Bren did not deserve torture. His parents did not deserve to die, and he does not deserve to suffer for it. He’s not sure he can believe that. They should have lived, he should pay for the blood he’s spilled.
He walks by a tree that he remembers sitting under with Astrid while they-
“I want to open it now,” Wulf said. They weren’t even on school grounds before he had become impatient, itching to tear back the brown paper of the package in his hands. Astrid turned to Bren and he shrugged.
“At least in the shade,” she said, always the prudent one, grabbing Eadwulf’s hand and pulling him under the boughs of a large oak tree. They sat in a little circle with the package in the middle. Bren reached out and started to unwrap it, carefully picking at the knotted twine that held it together. Wulf slapped his hands away and snapped the string and ripped the paper underneath it.
“Oh,” Astrid grabbed a smaller, wax paper wrapped package from the open bundle. “My mama sent lebkuchen!”
Astrid’s mother fell from her seat. She was choking, gasping for air as she drowned in her own lungs. Astrid knelt in front of her, her eyes steely and jaw set.
“I will not,” she spit, her voice as potent as the poison itself, “let you betray the Empire.” Her mother’s gaze was confused and terrified, staring up at her daughter as she ran out of air. Good, Bren thought, she got what she-
“What is it, Wulfie?” Eadwulf turned the gift he’d been sent in his hands, running his fingers delicately over the wood. His eyes started to well with tears.
“Ahh,” he wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand, “it’s a music box. My vati built it when I was little. He used to wind it up before I went to sleep at night.” He turned a small crank on the side and opened the intricately carved wooden lid. A quiet little melody started to play.
Eadwulf’s hands were bloody, but he didn’t seem to notice. He was grinning, a bright smile that the two of them knew well, that they cherished. A few viscous drops slid down his fingers and onto the old wood floor, staining it. He rubbed at the spot with the toe of his shoe, then laughed and shrugged.
“Hardly matters now,” he said, wiping his palms on his pants. “We’re done here. Bren?”
“Bren! It’s so cute!” Astrid said. He held the little figure of a cat between two fingers. The painting was a little messy, but it was a good re-creation of his sweet little Frumpkin. She had the little spot on her head that he liked to scratch carefully colored in, and a little string tied around her neck with a small, rolled-up note attached.
“It is pretty cute.” He took the note and set the little cat on his knee.
Our dear Bren,
Just a little something to remind you of home. We miss you very much, but we were very happy to read your last letter! You’re learning so much and we are very proud. You will go on to great things, we’re sure of it.
Alles liebe-
The cart was heavy with hay, so Wulf helped him push it. It’d been a dry season, and part of him rejoiced. A dry fire will burn quickly, and no one would suspect anything but an accident. That’s the way they’ve been taught, quick and quiet.
His parent’s betrayal had been unexpected, but as sure as he knew his own name, he had heard them say those awful things. Terrible things about their king and country, plans to overthrow it. This was the fate they deserved, and as a servant to the Empire, he was glad to give it.
He didn’t even use a powerful spell, a simple Firebolt loosed from his palm was enough to ignite the cart, then the walls, then the roof. The flames were bright orange, and so hot he felt almost like his face was burning. Eadwulf put a hand on his shoulder and Astrid leaned into his side as the inferno grew louder and louder. The fire and people both screaming.
“Caleb,” Astrid said. Her voice sounded odd like the heat had distorted it.
Caleb?
“Mr. Caleb, are you doing alright?” Caduceus puts a hand on Caleb’s chin and gently tilts his face up so they are eye to eye.
“Ja, I’m fine,” he says, blinking his eyes as the flames fade to an afterimage and the air around him cools. He takes in a shaking breath around the lingering smoke. Caduceus studies him for a minute, his gaze asking the questions that his voice does not. Caleb squeezes his hands into fists and relishes the bite of nails against skin.
“You were very far away for a moment there. I’m guessing that one was a bad memory.” Damn his understanding. Caleb reluctantly nods. “Would you like to talk about it?”
“No, I’d rather not, Mr. Clay,” he says tersely. He looks back down at the ground. Fjord’s boots have a new scuff that must have happened on Rumblecusp and the edge of Beau’s sash is starting to fray.
Jester reaches out and takes one of his hands in hers. He jerks away on instinct, but she’s stronger than him. She insistently unfurls his fingers.
“Please don’t hurt yourself, Caleb," she says. She speaks magic into his name, and the cuts on his palm disappear.
"Sorry.” The word tumbles out of his mouth before he realizes it, and he holds back a flinch. She lets go of his wrist. He looks up at them and is surprised to see their faces set with anger. Yasha has a hand on the hilt of her blade and Jester is tightly gripping the symbol of the Traveler. Beau takes a step forward and puts a hand on his shoulder.
“Hey,” she says, “let’s go get a little day-drunk before this important meeting, yeah?” He nods. “Lead the way.”
“This way,” he says, leading them away from the school, “there are a few bakeries around here you may like, Jester.”
He does not deserve them, any of them. He can hear the fire crackling in the distance, voices he could never hope to hear again. He hears the laughter of friends in a memory he cannot, he should not forget.