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There is a mole on Beauregard's neck. It sits just above the clavicle, nestled in a concave patch of skin that her uniform leaves exposed. It's a badge that she wears, in a sense. Caleb's gaze travels back to it constantly.
When she speaks, her shoulders move erratically. They hunch and relax at various intervals, dictated by whether her mouth is open or closed. Sometimes she'll stop, mouth agape, to catch her breath, and they will stay flexed just a moment longer, before being released.
Beauregard's body is her instrument. It is a wonder how she has accomplished that. A myriad of nerve endings and tissue and marrow that move and stretch and release at her will.
The musings of the wizard do not go unnoticed, because they never do.
"Why are you staring at me?"
"Just admiring how strong you are, Beauregard."
She smirks. Bathed in compliments is always her favourite throne to sit on, Righteousness Incarnate from the eye of Ioun to the one that sits in between her scapulae.
Before the trial starts, she puts a hand on his shoulder. Slightly panicked, the wizard settles at the familiar touch. Pillar of judgement is Beauregard Lionett, Justice-reclaimed-her-eyes from the Abyss.
"You don't have to be involved if you don't want to be."
"I want to be, Beauregard. As do Astrid and Eadwulf. We were all tortured. All maimed. All broken and bent like metal to be melted and shaped by the flame of his arrogance."
"I understood about half of what you said, but I'm here to support you."
"Thank you, Beauregard," he says, placing a hand on top of hers. It feels familiar, the gesture. Something they've done many times before, and it's always comforting. She is an anchor tied to the earth.
And that same anchor is keeping him in place now. Staring at a wooden door, separating him from the man who raised and broke him; the carvings on it stare back at him, the eye, the three-in-one. It is not judging, only looking.
Decades of grief pass in the time it takes him to bat his eyelids, gazing at his arms, now covered by a burgundi shirt that someone else put on him. It might have been Eadwulf this morning. It might have been Astrid: the memories are clouded.
He does remember flames. Not in the past; this morning still. It was quiet and his brows were furrowed, sleeping in a home that someone else called theirs. He woke up in a bed that wasn’t his and for a moment, just one, just a fraction of a fraction of an insignificant number, he was terrified to have dreamt it all. The laughter, the love, the pain, the stars, the eyes.
It was enough to put his hands forward and push the fire out of his palms, incinerating the space around him.
Astrid and Eadwulf found him curled up on the floor, muttering to himself. Then came Beauregard, shoulders-hunched-and-mole-on-the-clavicle, focused and calm. She picked him up and brought him to her rooms at the Library.
Beauregard. It was her who dressed him up this morning.
An odd thought enters his mind. He likens himself to a phoenix, rising from the ashes. He chases away the feeling of arrogance, whispering to himself that he’s deserved the praise. He’s earned it. He may not have earned much, but he has earned this. Begetting from the embers that burned away at the sound of nine laughters that filled his ears. The hands and knees are not blood-soaked anymore, they are not charred, but clean of blame. Stained by guilt, scorched by the sins of the son, he will cleanse them at the well of his reason for the rest of his life.
How much time has passed?
He is away at sea, tossed about under the light of a red moon that resembles the fire that has plagued him and comforted him. Come evening, the moon will be white and the stars will be peaceful. And he will sleep peacefully, a hand on his shoulder and a quelled spirit.
There is a comfort in her hand on his shoulder.
She moves next to him and opens the door.