Archive of Our Own ^beta

   This is what Nott knew about the man whose head was cradled in her lap: His name is Caleb, and his hair was as bright as bonfire. But there, in the sad excuse of a storehouse in some no-name town, the monochromatic nature of her darkvision turned him into a pale white ghost of a man. 

   Over the last few days? Weeks? Time was hard for her to comprehend even at her most sober.  Regardless, she was sure that the last few were very inconvenient and entirely avoidable. It was the stubborn insistence of this man named Caleb with the bonfire hair, to camp outside of town. Even as he was shaking with fever-flushed skin, her suggestions to chance the taverns for him to get some proper rest were all shot down with a stubborn set of his jaw and a shake of his head. 

   Most days of the routine they found themselves in, conversation was a rare but welcome thing. He was serious, intelligent, and at times very mischievous. Though his fingers were not quite as sticky as hers he possessed a very useful and  tactical mind. He was both cautious and reckless, oftentimes more cautious for others than himself. He loved to read, and the sight of a book of any kind alighted a youthfulness in him that would turn to sharp focus on the words contained within. She loved to watch him read, and loved the expression on his face when she found (stole) another book for him.  She knew there were ghosts he carried with him, but that was never a subject she felt like she could broach. She could empathize as well, it's not like she didn't have a ghost of her own. 

   There were times when the man named Caleb with the bonfire hair, who liked to read, would go quiet. Often for hours at a time, but sometimes for days. She paid it no mind, and just figured he was conversing with the ghosts he carried. He would come out of it after a while; he always did. It was usually out of necessity, like when Nott, tired of waiting for Caleb to be fit to go to town, would go alone and get herself in trouble. Then things would go back to normal, they’d arrive at a town, shirk the townspeople of their pocket change with quick fingers and clever scams, steal whatever they could get their hands on, before running off to the next podunk town where she would inevitably get in trouble again. He had no obligation to come to her aid each time, but then again neither did she for him. It was never spoken between the two, when they decided that if they were to drift, they would drift together. It was only supposed to be a short dalliance of miserable company and even more miserable ale, though they always found an excuse to continue to travel together another day.

   Then the man named Caleb, with the bonfire hair, who liked to read, who sometimes wouldn't speak, got sick. It was hardly surprising given the several days of constant, miserable, empire drizzle. She had been lucky. Oftentimes when they found themselves in a village or town, she was tucked inside Caleb’s coat. Her diminutive form  would be carried like a babe so that she might pass as his daughter, away from prying eyes and cold rain. 

   Caleb was not so lucky, but he never complained. She wishes he had, maybe then he wouldnt’ve gotten so sick. 

   It was some kind of illness that she figured goblins couldn’t catch, as she never caught ill herself, but it ravaged Caleb. To make matters worse, his occasional nightmares turned constant in the wake of his fever. Then the nightmares haunted him into silence; and with his silence came an infuriating, irrational resolve. 

   “Lets just go to town. Or you can go to town. I can stay out here if you're worried.” she was begging at this point. “Please.  I’m not the one who's sick.” Her words were only met with the same stubborn quiet. She let out a forceful breath in frustration, which made Caleb flinch, which in turn made her even more frustrated.

    At the end of the day Nott was exasperated and bereft of words herself; so she simply took his large human hands in hers and yanked with all her goblin weight in the direction of the nearest village. Caleb, who, while horribly skinny for men like him, was still easily more than twice her weight and height. Using that to his advantage, he ground his heels into an alcove of trees, parked his ass on the sodden earth and would not move. An unspoken ‘no’ rang clear in the silence. She felt her eye twitch at such childish behavior, and wished that Caleb’s strange magical cat had not been kicked to oblivion. Frumpkin, that bastard, was usually more successful than she at persuading the infuriating man crouched before her to fucking take care of himself. In the end she relented. She was tired.  

   They passed the hours in silence, save for the phlegmy coughs and sniffles from Caleb’s prone form; he hadn’t moved from his spot, he simply tipped over in the same crouched position. Only now, he was horizontal. They were both uncomfortable, damp, and hungry. She was mostly sober by the end of the day and she was a poor bed nurse for it. She felt itchy and restless, and she needed to do something. Anything was less boring than watching this man suffer from his own choices. She could just leave. She spent some time wondering why she wouldn't. In the end all she did was drink from her flask that only got lighter and lighter, letting the swill soothe her temper. It was amusing, that, in the haze of her drink he almost looked like a child. 

   If the man was at all conscious, he showed no signs of it. So she crept up close to where he lay, and let herself really look. A narrow face, his hair was greasy and hung limp to his chin, his beard was growing unkempt and wild. His nose took up the majority of the space. A pretty nose though, she thought; and for all the scraps they found themselves in he has yet to mar his face with the memory of one. In health his skin is pink, and splattered with freckles. She looks at his face, and thinks that with care he could be very handsome. 

   A second day passed, and he got sicker. She would brave the river bank to collect fresh water for him to drink, and to try and cool his fever. She managed, despite the rain, to build a pittering fire that burned just long enough to boil water.  She used it to soak their hardtack and jerky into something he could chew, but without proper shelter and real food she knew his condition would only worsen. On the third day, Nott tried begging again. He had constant chills, he couldn't keep much down, and she knew if they didn't move soon, Caleb wouldn't be able even if he wanted to. To her relief, this time she was somewhat successful, coaxing the man with the compromise of no inns or taverns. They would stay out of sight and find a barn or storehouse to sleep in for the night.

   The storehouse with the rotting wall in this bumfuck town may as well have been the most luxurious inn in Rexxentrum.  In the cover of night they made a pitiful attempt to be stealthy, and half crept half hobbled to the back of the storehouse where there was a hole just large enough for a skinny human to crawl through. It was less than a 30 minute walk, but when they arrived Caleb shook terribly with exertion and cold. They were too scared to make a fire, fearing they would reveal themselves to the fury of the town; but the storehouse had almost four walls and a roof that gave their clothes an opportunity to dry.  Better yet, within the contents of the storehouse, she found a pouch of roasted nuts and dried fruit, a partial loaf of stale rye bread that was probably saved to be turned into bread pudding, a small pot of cooked animal fat, salted river fish, and a waxy cheese of some pungent variety. She wasn't sure foods like this were something that Caleb's stomach could currently tolerate, but they had more nutrition than their current stores.  She looked over her shoulder to where Caleb was wilting against the side of the wall. She helped him lie down, head propped on what seemed to be a burlap sack of barley. Bushing his hair aside, she revealed slow tears rolling down his cheeks. Caleb turned  his head away, face first into sack. 

   “...should go.” Notts ears perked up in surprise. The voice was weak and thready, but it was his voice; and it caused her to feel a small wave of elation to hear it again. She tried to swallow her emotion though, she had found out pretty fast that making a spectacle when he started speaking again was a quick road to send him spiraling back to silence.  

   “Go where?” she knit her brows, “We just got here. You can barely walk. Go to sleep.”

   “.. nnooo ” he moans into the burlap. He peeks, turning his head up slightly, one dull eye focused on her. “ You-” the rest of his sentence was lost to the stupid sack. 

   She could, however, put two and two together. Frustration flared in her chest like bile that burns the back of your throat after a heavy meal. “You want me to go.” She clarified in a flat emotionless voice. She was frustrated, yes, but mostly she was tired. 

   “Not want.” Said the man named Caleb with the bonfire hair, who liked to read, who sometimes wouldn’t speak, who was also stubborn as a mule. “ Should. ” The word pushed out from behind his lips, the shhh was drawn out as if to quiet a babe. Now, she was mostly frustrated. 

   She stood abruptly away from Caleb’s sour breath, feeling foolish that she assumed that her company was wanted.  

   “Is it because I hold you back? Because you can’t go to town with some goblin freak? Some kind of monster?” He flinched. She knew these words were knives to him, they were to her as well. Perhaps they were more severe than the man deserved, but weapons were rarely used because someone deserved them. She clenched her fists tightly at her sides and looked away from his face. Hot tears prickled at the corners of her eyes. Was she angry at him or at herself? She took the blade of her words and twisted. 

   “You wouldn't be like this if it weren't for me.” She spit the words, acid in her mouth.

   Caleb shook his head again, more tears fell free. He made noises, none were coherent enough to resemble words, or Nott was in no mood to hear them, but either way sleep took him before he could say more.  

   Nott watched his gaunt face, sallow and dehydrated. It was ugly to see and worse to smell. She was tired, and her flask was empty.  She wanted to leave him. She wanted to stealth away and leave in the night, just to be rid of the smell of sick. He apparently even wanted her to; which was reasonable, they were never supposed to travel together for that long. It was almost embarrassing to think it took her that long to pick up on it. She was the one who was letting some irrational feeling fuel her, she used him as like a bandage to stem the bleeding hole of her loneliness; placed all her eggs in a broken basket; a poor substitute for a life she’d lost years ago. She was laughably pitiful. Caleb was just trying to be pragmatic. 

   She should go, and she would, as soon as she knew she wasn't leaving him for dead. As she made that decision, however, a sense of wrongness that smoldered in her since she and Caleb met for the first time in that cell all those months ago sparked to life and coursed through her in protest. Something about his pitiful visage gnawed at an old feeling in her chest. A compulsion to care, to nurture, was something she hadn't felt in this body before. And that feeling inside her needed  her to mother this adult man, and it pushed insistently against her rib cage. She clutched at the fabric of her tunic above her heart, a desperate and futile attempt to contain a flood. A sense of deep dread was the only thing that braced her, as the pressure of that feeling burst from her chest like water from a broken dam and she found that she had no choice. She was drowning. So she reached for it, let herself breathe it in this monstrous body, seeking something familiar, aching for it. 

   Only fatigue answered her call.

   She was tired; because it felt different, whatever it was, because in this body she was no mother. Shame. Disgust. These feelings she could settle in, familiar like sodden earth in an alcove of trees. 

    Another part of me has changed, she thought, and let herself sink into the grief of that revelation. Her flask was empty. With nothing better to do, and nothing to drown the feelings away, she curled into the adjacent space and simply watched the man named Caleb with the bonfire hair, who liked to read, who sometimes wouldn't speak, who was as stubborn as a mule, who, understandably, did not want her around. 

_

   It was the dead of night when Caleb began to yell. She lunged forward and clamped a hand over his mouth, using her other hand to try jostle the man awake. It took her a moment to realize that his eyes were already open, unseeing and afraid. There was a moment of fear in Nott, she knew her goblin face was not something of comfort for most citizens of the empire. She wouldn't put it past him, unmoored as he was if he were to face her with the same repulsion that everyone else gave her. He thrashed, shouting behind her hand, trying to free himself. Nott winced knowing that this was not the best way to wake someone from their terror. But they had to stay quiet. Only when she caught the scent of fire and a light in her periphery did she jump back, narrowly avoiding the swipe of a palm full of curling, amber, arcane flames. There was one more thing she knew about him: he was magical. 

   She hushed him from afar as best as she could, not wanting to get a face full of flame. He thankfully had stopped crying out but his hands still burned and his breath was still too rapid, wheezing like the cry of baby mice. 

   “It wasn't real, '' she whispered, “you're in a storehouse in some small town. We went there because you got sick.” her words fell on unhearing ears. He curled inwards, head on the wooden floor, the stupid barley sack banished to the opposite side of the storehouse from his flailing.  His movement jostled loose the smell of fear-sweat, sharp and sour. She noticed smells so acutely now.

   Slowly she approached him and when he did not move she placed a ginger hand on his shoulder and then his cheek, moving dull ruddy tangles away from his face. In the light he no longer looked like a dead man, but he didn't look good. She stroked his cheek trying to persuade him back away from his dreams hoping her face was a welcome one. Gradually he calmed down, and extinguished his palms. When he did kill the flames, Nott sent a silent prayer of thanks to no specific god that the store house was not burnt down, and that at the moment, no one seemed to have been alerted to Caleb’s cries. At some point she helped him into a sitting position, so he didn't drown himself in all the snot and phlegm that leaked from every orifice. 

   They sat together in the dark; and in the silence, she found an unexpected well of patience. She wanted him to set the pace of whatever this was. An indiscriminate amount of time passed before she heard him speak again,

   “Why are you still here?” It sounded tired and petulant. Nott simply stared at him. 

   “You still want me gone.” Her hurt was thick in her throat. 

   Caleb's shoulders tightened and he started at a spot on his lap. His eyes blinked rapidly as if to hold back tears, as if he didn't want her to see him cry, as if he hadn't already been crying. He nods. 

   Nott looked away, finding her own spot on the floor to stare at. “I get it. It’s not fair for you to always have to worry about me.“ this time her words felt like rocks in her stomach. She was going to miss him, in a selfish way he made her feel less like vermin, and it would be hard to adjust back. 

    “I didn't mean to send you away because you are a monster.” his plosives were dulled from swollen sinuses. “I wanted to send you away because I am the monster.” A desolate and small voice warbled out from the man twice her size. 

    She blinked. The realization was almost funny. This “monster” before her was slumped over like Edith’s old Basset hound. Caleb wasn't being pragmatic. This stubborn, stubborn man was just digging his heels in when he shouldn’t. She snorted, and Caleb jerked.  Whatever monster he thought he was, it was not one that endangered her.

    “No,” as measured as her reedy voice could be, she continued, “You’re just a man.” 

   “You don’t know anything.” 

   “And you’re being stubborn! You’re sick! What will you do without me? I’m just trying to help!” 

   “I never asked for your help.” 

   “I never asked for your opinion.” She wasn’t listening to him anymore, she would not play party to his self flagellation. 

   “You don’t understand!” His voice was louder now, startling Nott. However instead of anger, his voice betrayed desperation. He was afraid. He cowed away from her; a dog expecting to be hit. His eyes, wide and glassy, were trained on the floor. “You don’t know me. What I’ve done. Please, just go.” 

   She took the chance that maybe, just maybe, this body could be used for gentle things. She inhaled a shaky breath and pushed past the wrongness of it all. With a dry linen from her pack, she  turned to face him. Slowly, announcing her movements as clearly as possible, she brought a hand to his cheek trying to get him to face her way. It took a bit of gentle, but insistent force before he reluctantly turned to face her, still afraid to meet her eyes. She licked the linen to wet it and gently scrubbed at his face to rid him of the sweat, snot and tears. His long ginger eyelashes were dark and wet. 

   Then, when she was done, she used both hands to tuck hair that she knew was once beautiful, now turned dull and tangled, behind each ear. 

    “You’re right; I don’t know what you’ve done. But here’s what I do know: you're not a monster, you’re just a man who’s name is Caleb, and your hair is red like the last bonfires of Highsummer.” She gently guided his head into her lap. She was surprised and relieved that he let her do so. “I know you love to read, and it shows on your face. It’s wonderful to see.” Now that she began speaking; words she didn't know she had tumbled from her mouth unbidden. “You carry around ghosts with you I think, and every now and again you’re quiet for a while, sometimes after a bad dream, or sometimes for no reason I could tell, but that’s okay. You’re there when I need you. You’re stubborn,” it was somewhat of a surprise to herself that she was smiling, and wondered, bewildered, when had she started thinking of him so fondly? She absently cards her fingers through his hair, careful of the many tangles. A gesture that was once so normal, ingrained in a dead mother’s body.

    “You’re more stubborn than a mule could ever be, and that’s why we’re here, but that's okay too.  I think the most impressive thing about you is that you can cast magic, and that’s incredible. So few have the talent or mind for it; you’re very smart.” She felt movement and looked down, saw that Caleb had readjusted himself onto his side so that his pretty nose was squished against her abdomen, eyes shut tight.  Long human arms wrapped around her, clinging as best he could. She closed her eyes and shamelessly tried to imagine they were the arms of someone much, much smaller. Waves of full body shudders and shameless loping moans vibrated against her belly, as hot tears seeped into the fabric of her dress. She let him cry, and continued to gently detangle the knots in his hair. ”You’re the first magician I’ve met, I think. I knew magic was dangerous; but I never knew it could be so lovely. Until I met you” he squeezed. A distraught noise buzzed against her midsection. “It’s lovely.” She repeated. Then she stopped talking, but continued to move her hands; for she had run out of the things she knew about him.  

   Eventually, far after her legs and back began to ache, his breathing slowed to a steady, but irritating snore; one that wheezed at the apex of his breath. He had fallen back asleep once again. She bent down as far as her position would let her, and whispered, “and whether you want me around or not, I’m here.”