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With a new set of clothes and a few good meals in him, Yeza’s jumpiness is starting to fade. He holds himself straighter, not totally free of his normal slouch, but not cowering behind every convenient piece of furniture, either. He’s looking more and more like himself.
Nott—Veth watches the transformation with equal parts relief and sorrow.
“I need to tell you something,” she says when their day of shopping is over, when they close their rented room’s door on the rest of the Nein and whatever new journey they’re already planning to undertake that will probably get them all nearly killed again.
“Mhm?” Yeza unbuttons his waistcoat, his jacket already folded neatly on top of his spare shirt in the room’s solitary chair.
She wants to tease him for his unexpected neatness, but then she remembers the filthy prison cell and thinks better of it. She’s antsy, nervous; she’s only had about five sips from her flask today, all quick and stealthy in corners and outhouses. Because Veth—the wife Yeza knows—doesn’t drink like Nott does.
“I have to tell you something,” she repeats, and then follows it up with absolutely nothing because she has no idea where to start.
“Everything okay?” Yeza asks, watching her carefully now with his waistcoat flapping open, head quirked to one side.
“Yes, yes… no. I don’t know. You didn’t have to get the tattoo, you know. I shouldn’t have made you.”
“You didn’t make me,” Yeza says, expression curious. “And besides, mine turned out really nice.”
He’s always been great at missing the point entirely. “But we haven’t even really… talked. About everything. So I shouldn’t have… I’m afraid I took advantage of your vulnerable and emotional state.”
Yeza laughs. “You told me about the goblins, and the adventures, and the rescue. And I told you about how I got taken from—“ he can’t quite say it, and she holds up a hand to stop him from trying. “What else do you want to talk about?”
What does she want to talk about? The list is long. It starts with the name Nott the Brave and encompasses the blood on her hands and the flask on her hip and all the big and small betrayals of who Veth used to be.
“I… there was this Minotaur. In Asarius. The city of beasts, and they were right about that because, wow, he definitely was. Like, his ripples were ripped, you know? And there was no Mrs. Sunbreaker; I asked, which was a little bit hypocritical, don’t you think?” She’s babbling nonsense and Yeza is looking at her like she’s babbling nonsense. “And he wasn’t the only one, but he was the most recent, and I have to tell you or else you might think… you won’t know that I’m…”
“You’re what?” Yeza’s voice is unreadable. Well, actually, it reads as neutral, interested, still curious. But that can’t be right.
“I don’t know, I’ve had crushes, okay? On like, three people. Three and a half, but It’s weird with Caleb because he kind of triggers my maternal instincts but also my “mysterious hot boi” instincts and I’ve never had time to unpack all of that and also he’s probably in love with a torture victim from his past, or our dead friend, or maybe Jester, so forget I brought him up—my POINT is that… is that the world is really big, and full of beautiful things and I … I haven’t been…” pining, she wants to say, but of course that’s not true exactly. She’s longed for the comforting presence of Yeza as part of every wish for a soft bed or a good meal or a moment of quiet. But when you’re on a… an adventure, a quest, a mercenary murder mission, a chaos crew, whatever they were calling these hellish, heart-pounding months, you have to push that longing away. All of it. You drink and you sleep on the ground and you lust after minotaurs and you stab baby creatures with your short sword and you drink a lot more and you rush headfirst into danger to shield your friends. You don’t let yourself dream about your husband and your toddler and all the grief you’re causing them. You can’t. Or maybe someone else could, but she can’t. She’s not brave enough. “I haven’t been—I’m not a very good wife.”
And there it is. And now that it’s out, she can’t hide it anymore. She watches him lose interest in undressing, watches his cross the room and stand in front of her. She cringes and closes her eyes, always the coward.
“Veth.”
Yeza’s voice, saying her name with that familiar patient smile, steals her breath. She drowns in the cold murky ache of love and self-loathing because why why WHY is she doing this? Why is she trying to get her husband to leave her, why is she pushing away the only person who’s ever looked at her and seen something unbroken, something to love, something to protect?
Except that’s not true, is it? Not the only one, not anymore. But the first. The one who saw it in Veth, before she had crossbow bolts and alcohol to hide her anxiety behind, before she learned not to talk so much and to keep her collections hidden deep in her pockets. Yeza loved a version of her that she isn’t sure exists anymore, but he loved her when nobody else did.
And she loves him, and she wants him, so why the fuck is she telling him about the fucking musculature of the fucking Minotaur??
Because he deserves to know, a suspiciously noble-sounding whisper explains patiently in the back of her head. Her friends are a bad influence, obviously.
“Veth?” Yeza repeats. Checking in, because he’s been talking and she’s been spinning out, not registering his voice at all. “Did you get any of that?”
He laughs at her sheepish head shake. Because he is a wonderful man who doesn’t deserve to feel… shackled and beholden to a goblin with no attention span and a drinking problem and an overactive appreciation for muscles and mystery.
“I said that it’s okay. You don’t have to… confess anything to me. I mean, I want to know, I want to know everything you’ve been through, but I don’t… please don’t cry about the hot Minotaur!”
They’re both laughing now. It makes her dizzy with memories and longing.
“I’m going to talk now,” Yeza warns. Veth reins in her thoughts even as they try to spiral back to the first time she told him how hard it was to keep her head in a conversation, how he made up a signal to clue her in when he had something important to say. The signal still works. She listens.
“I don’t know how to explain…” Yeza stares at his hands. Even though his face is close to hers, his voice sounds far away. “I don’t even want to explain how it felt after the goblins— when you were… gone. It wasn’t…” he gulps. She wants to reach for him, to comfort him, but she’s spent so many years with no way to practice, and she can’t quite remember how. “But I survived it. I had to. There was Luc, and there was your sacrifice, and I had to… so I did.”
“You’re brave,” she whispers, because she doesn’t think she could have done it. (She would literally prefer to jump into a river of lava than fail to rescue Yeza. She doesn’t think that says anything good about her at all).
“I’m making excuses,” Yeza whispers back, head down. “I’m trying to say that I… moved on. I accepted. And I was, before that woman came to Felderwin with her demands, I was sort of, mostly, basically happy.” He finally looks up, tear tracks following the line of his overgrown sideburns. “I’m sorry. I didn’t look for you. I didn’t even think you could… I didn’t know.”
She feels her eyebrows climb, and keep climbing, and she knows her voice will come out like nails on a chalkboard before it does. “ARE YOU—?” She tries to tone it down, doesn’t succeed much. “Are you apologizing for being happy? For being healthy? For raising our son when I disappeared??? What the FUCK do you think you have to apologize for?“ she huffs for another five seconds before a certain section of Yeza’s speech finally processes. Oh. Oh gods. She’s very, very slow on the uptake. She needs a drink, or five, or twelve.
“You moved on,” she says, and it feels like removing bandages from an arm she wishes she didn’t have to see. “Of course you did. Yeza, that’s great. That’s so great. I’m happy for you.” Her voice breaks, her vision blurs, she catches the edge of her lip with several sharp teeth and clenches until she tastes blood. “Old Edith didn’t mention… she was being kind, probably.” But nobody in town had spoken of another person lost when the alchemy shop burned. “You weren’t remarried, then? Were you… engaged?”
“What? No! Nonononononono” Yeza’s hands burn her cheeks and his curls tickle her ears as he presses her forehead to hers. “Wow, bad choice of words. I wasn’t engaged or courting! I never, gods, I was nowhere near that. I just meant that I was, you know, that I wasn’t—I missed you, but I wasn’t missing you all the time anymore. I wasn’t waiting for you to come back. I was just living my life.”
“As you should have been!” She feels indignant, relieved, shaky, hypocritical. “You should have been courting three ladies, at least! You were an eligible widower with a thriving business and every mother in Felderwin should have been banging down your door!”
Yeza’s breath smells like Caduceus’s tea. She wants to feel him laugh against her face forever.
“Well, maybe one or two of them tried it, but… you know, I think we got off course here.”
“Conversational goblin raiding party, that’s me.” That joke was probably funnier when goblin raiding parties were just a story that waylaid merchant caravans on faraway roads and not a traumatic lived experience, but Yeza laughs anyway and she loves him for it.
“My point,” he says firmly, “is that, this? You being here, alive? This has already surpassed my wildest, greediest dreams. I didn’t think I would ever…” he pulls back to wipe his eyes before lunging forward determinedly, wrapping his arms around her and burying his face in the crook of her neck. “I know it sounds cheesy, or fake, or whatever, but I actually mean it when I say… I just want you to be happy. I’m alive because of you. I have Luc because of you. Hell, even before any of that that, my ‘thriving business’ wouldn’t exist if you hadn’t pushed me to open it and helped make ends meet all those years.”
She pats his head, horrible green fingers getting lost in the familiar cloud of his hair, and It’s a million times better than hiding them under bandages. Her brain feels full of Caleb’s molasses, because Yeza’s embrace is contradicting everything that should be true. She is not Veth anymore, not worthy to be held like this. Nott.
“I don’t want you to feel guilty.” Yeza says, whispered voice almost too loud for her goblin ears. “I want you to have everything. And that includes… freedom. If that’s what you need. However you need it. If you’re part of Luc’s life, if you get to teach him some of your courage and badassery, that’s way more than I hoped for.”
“Also I can keep giving you the handfuls of gold,” she says. Ridiculous, always ridiculous, but it’s easier to make ridiculous jokes than to hear what Yeza is saying.
“The handfuls of gold don’t hurt!” Yeza’s laugh is shaky. His hands tighten around her waist. She remembers when he first touched her hand, the reverence when he said “you’re warm.”
Maybe this isn’t so confusing after all. Maybe it wasn’t misplaced emotion and sentimentality and nostalgia for someone who never existed. Maybe he really just loves her. Still.
“So…” Veth says. “Are you saying… that we can break up if I want to?”
Yeza stills in her arms, stiffens. “I… yes.” He starts to pull away. “Yes, of course.”
But Veth has strength behind her wiry arms now. She holds him in place.
“Well I was saying that we could break up if you wanted to.” She says. “But it doesn’t sound like either of us wants that.”
Her husband relaxes against her. “No,” he says, “I really, really don’t.”
“Good.” She says. And then, because she can never quite still her mind or calm her insecurities, she finds herself asking, “Even if I need to go on more adventures?” Her friends would die without her, and that’s just a fact, and that’s as unacceptable as letting Luc and Yeza starve in the goblin camp.
“Even if you go on a hundred adventures,” Yeza says without hesitation. “Honestly, and maybe check in with me again on this when I’m less emotional, but… even if you ride a hundred bull men.”
Veth’s shocked laughter mingles with his. “You shouldn’t say that!” She giggles. “Caleb’s into polyamory; you never know what you’re opening the door for.”
“I’m opening the door for you.” Yeza’s fingers scratch the base of her skull, and for the first time in years she feels something like appreciation mix in with the wrongness of her skin. She wants her body back, but maybe, for an instant, she can be glad for this loaner that she has.
“It’s…” Yeza’s voice rumbles around her. “I already said we’re way past wildest dream territory, right? ‘Wife away on a sexy business trip’ is a huge upgrade from ‘dead wife.’ That’s where I’m at right now.”
“I just want to be really clear that the trips are almost never sexy,” Veth grumbles. “They are terrifying and full of unattractive monsters, and I am a million times more likely to get knocked unconscious than laid.”
Yeza extracts himself from their entwined embrace so they’re face to face, which is great because she gets to see his smoldering bedroom eyes but bad because he must see her, teeth and all, and maybe someday she won’t cringe at the thought of that but today is still not that day. “So you’re saying there’s a certain alchemical component missing from the equation of your life?” He asks, arching one eyebrow.
“I… would not have put it that way but sure, Yeza, sure.”
“Well, you’re in luck,” Yeza grins, “because in spite of our recent remodeling, the Brenatto brand is still, you know, very, um, reliable.” He frowns when she snorts. “I mean strong! Wait, muscular! No that doesn’t make sense. I mean… I can’t think of any sexy adjectives that also describe alchemy shops, can I just kiss you now?”
And Veth closes her eyes and imagines a very different hand—her own hand—rubbing against her husband’s sideburns and her own mouth saying “yes.”
***
“The teeth, Yeza, the teeth, be careful!”
She’s not going to forgive herself if she slices up his lips. She needs to ask Fjord for tips on fang filing. This is such a disaster, and there are still pinpricks of blood in her mouth and she probably smells like something unnameably awful and maybe Yeza is going to realize any minute now that “dead wife” and “goblin wife” are pretty similar levels of unappealing, actually.
“Okay okay okay,” Yeza pulls back, a puff of air escaping his lips, and her stomach drops until she sees that it’s amusement—not frustration or disgust— twinkling behind his glasses. “Just… give me a second.”
He holds her at arm’s length, a hand on each shoulder, and tilts his head this way and that like he’s eyeing a particularly tricky potion. All that’s missing is his signature—no, there he goes, releasing her right shoulder to adjust his glasses more firmly on his nose.
“It’s definitely… puzzling,” she says, trying to grin before remembering that will just show off the teeth.
“I like puzzles,” is Yeza’s mumbled response.
Her heart swoops. She really does love her dorky husband.
He reaches out to stroke her cheek. She closes her eyes and leans into the touch, which drifts down to her neck and back up the other side of her face. It’s nice. Then his mouth follows the path his hand just took, down and back up, and it’s even nicer. She wishes, suddenly, that she were a lot more drunk. Drunk enough to mistake this pounding heart for her old one, drunk enough not to care about everything she’s missing, all the ways she’s wrong. Drunk enough to do this.
Yeza traces an unreasonably long ear with one finger. “Is this sensitive?” He asks quietly, and then his tongue follows the edge and Nott gasps, every muscle between her belly button and her knees clenching in a symphony of yes to answer him. She wants to sink her claws into the back of his brand new, so well-fitted pants and—
Her claws. Nott’s claws.
Veth stumbles back. “Yezzy, yezzy,” she gulps, voice strangled. “Wait, I…” she sees his worried face and gets rocked with more guilt. “I… first of all I love your energy. Really, definitely. And on many levels, I 100% wish to be having wild rhino sex with you.”
“Petal water sex” yeza grumbles in offended alchemist.
“That too,” Veth nods, feeling frantic. “But this body… I don’t think I can. I’m sorry. It’s too much. I don’t even know…” who I am, she wants to say, but she’s afraid so she cowers behind a joke instead. “… if the whole Nott Pocket situation is full of acid or teeth or what. Really, this is for your own safety.”
Yeza watches her carefully, slowly reaching for her hand and pulling her just a few steps closer, not up against him, not back into his arms. She’s relieved and disappointed and frustrated and afraid.
“Okay.” Yeza says.
“Okay?” What does that mean? ‘Okay, I guess you were right after all and I can’t be with you so we should end this now’?
“Okay,” he repeats with a smile. “Whatever you want.”
He can’t be real. He’s always been like this, cheerfully navigating around Veth’s strangeness as if it was easy and natural, and it has never made any sense, and it makes even less sense now.
“Why are you like this?” Veth whispers. And when Yeza cocks his head and doesn’t answer she asks, “what do you want?”
“I want… to get back to Luc, as soon as possible” Yeza says. Veth grimaces in guilt. She’s more used to this separation than he is, and it hurts to notice the difference, how her thoughts aren’t stuck on her son. “And I want to… I don’t know, feel safe again. And I want you. And that’s about it.” Yeza’s smile is soft and hopeful. “And, okay, in the shorter term, like right now tonight, I’d still like to… I mean, rhino sex being off the table, I’d like to try to make you feel good. Especially if you really haven’t… okay I’m not going to call it your Nott pocket, but have you really not explored your new body?”
“I mostly sleep on the ground,” Veth whines, cheeks heating. “With Caleb. And a cat. And now nine other weirdos.”
“You know there are less than nine of you,” Yeza mutters, voice tinged with despair. “You must know.”
“That’s what you take issue with, out of this whole conversation.”
“Well, you’re not sleeping on the ground tonight,” Yeza says, one eyebrow arched. “Unless you want to do that whole thing again, but… honestly my shoulder is still sore so please don’t.”
“You didn’t have to join me!” Veth groans, always guilty, always doing the wrong thing.
“Yes I did.”
Veth looks down at their joined hands, then immediately regrets it. She’s seen Yeza’s hands scrabble against grasping goblin claws before. How can she stop seeing it? How can he look at her and not see it?
“I’m sorry,” Yeza says when she pulls her hands away and clenches them in her skirt to avoid reaching for her flask. “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be pushy. It’s… I’ll stop. We can go back to the way it was after Luc was born. Back rubs and foot rubs all the time. Is that… is that okay?”
Veth looks down at the bean-like tattoo on her left hand. Her heart, misshapen as it is, pounds impatiently against her scrawny chest. She wants her self back, and she can’t have that yet, but she wants her family back too.
“You said your shoulder was sore,” she says, reaching out the tattooed hand slowly so that it looks nothing like a claw, or an attack. “Turn around. Let me.”
She waits until she’s free of Yeza’s gaze to cast invisibility. His tiny groans and unintelligible whispers as she massages his narrow shoulders are comforting, familiar, and kind of hot. She breathes through the impulse to bury her teeth in the curve of his neck, to prick the freckles under his shirt collar with her claws. She tries to remember how to be Veth, soft and sweet and not so feral. Or was she always like this, deep down? Yeza’s the only person in the world who might know. She’s not ready to ask.
“Thank you,” Yeza murmurs after several minutes, rolling his neck with a long sigh. “Your turn.” He turns and startles momentarily when he doesn’t see her. Before she can decide to drop her invisibility, his hand darts out, finding Veth’s chest, of all things, making her giggle. Yeza snorts too but doesn’t move his hand. “Your turn?” He says again, eyes roaming without catching Veth’s, which are starting to blur again.
Her concentration drops, somewhere in the night of soft touches and softer words and not-quite-fulfilled longing. She has no idea when or how it happens, because Yeza doesn’t react at all.