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On the nights that Yasha can’t sleep, she walks until her feet are bloody, and then she walks to Caleb’s tower.
Tonight, a decade after they fought someone wearing the body of her best friend in a city made of screaming flesh, Yasha dreams of flowers and Zuala and when she wakes up to clear skies and restless wind, she runs.
She leaves Beau sleeping in their bed and she runs, because the truth of it, the real truth, is that Yasha is so fucking good at running away.
Caleb does not live far from them these days, but Yasha is winded by the time she reaches their door. It’s slightly ajar, and Essek is waiting for her.
Yasha pulls up short. “Essek. Is--"
“Everything’s fine,” the drow says, twitching his ears. “I just remembered the date and Caleb thought you might want to talk.”
Oh. Yasha’s throat tightens terribly. Essek spares her any more conversation and waves her inside.
Caleb is awake, and sitting curled up in an arm chair by the embers of a fire. Little flames are dancing along the knuckles of his right hand. He doesn’t look up at her, keeping his eyes on the coals. “Hello.”
“Hi.”
“Can’t sleep?”
Yasha blows out a sharp breath and finds it does nothing to lessen the tightness in her chest. “Do you dream about them?”
It is perhaps a stupid question. She asks anyway.
Caleb hums, and doesn’t really answer. He reaches out a scarred hand and beckons. “Come sit with me,” he says instead.
Yasha sits, knees pulled up to her chest, making herself small and tight. Beau would untangle her if she were here, Beau would stroke her hair and kiss her throat and make her relax. But Yasha does not want to be held and loved. She wants to sit with the aching raw fury that licks at her insides and never goes away. She wants to be angry and sad and remember every fucking thing she did, just for a night. Just for right now.
“Did I tell you,” Caleb says into the silence, the flames growing brighter in his hands. He’s clenching and unclenching his fists, flames snarling and hissing like exhaled breaths with each release. “About the first person I killed? As a boy?”
He has, but Yasha tilts her head back to look at him. His eyes are dark, hollow things. He’s not looking at her, not really. “Tell me,” she says, and in the back of her mind the echo of Obann begins to laugh.
It’s a familiar story, and she listens with the attention that he wants her to, that is to say, she watches the fire dance across his fingers and when the flames get too high she touches his knee and brings him back to this moment, in a warm tower, years and years away from that very first death.
Essek, for his part, doesn’t say anything. He lets them have their time, sitting in a chair across the room. There’s a book open in his lap, but Yasha knows he’s not reading it.
When Caleb has finished speaking, Yasha takes a breath.
“Now,” Caleb says quietly. “Tell me what you’re thinking.” It could be a command, but it’s soft and steady in Caleb’s voice.
Yasha closes her eyes and lets the echo of Obann’s laughter ring louder until it’s terrible, until the aching tightness in her belly brings her down, bent double.
Caleb’s hand is still warm from the flames, and he rests it on her shoulder. “Yasha,” he says quietly.
He calls her Yasha and not Orphanmaker, and she can breathe.
“I can’t stop thinking about the Cobalt Soul,” she says to the floor.
“And Beau.” It is not a question.
Always, Beau.
Yasha sucks in a breath. Lets it out.
“Tell me,” Caleb says.
And because she knows he will not flinch, Yasha does.
On the nights Beau can’t sleep, she goes to the library. The stacks are the perfect place for practicing forms. She stretches through the school of evocation section, shaking out her wrists and rolling her neck. She does breathing exercises in the school of transmutation section.
It’s three in the morning, and the torches are low, and there’s only the creak of her bare feet an ancient wood, and the steady ache of her lungs.
Beau has rarely had dreams that meant anything, and when she can’t sleep, the darkness is worse.
The strange thing about this life that she’s built for herself is that she’s still not quite sure how to be a person. A good one, anyway. And in the dark, when she’s alone with her thoughts, she has no idea if she should even try.
Ten years after she watched Jester die and Kingsley become Kingsley in a city made of screaming flesh, Beau walks to the library and finds Fjord waiting for her.
“You,” Fjord says. “Should be sleeping.” He’s leaning casually against one of the entrances, ridiculous pirate hat pulled down over his eyes, arms crossed. He looks stupid. She loves him so much.
“Shouldn’t you be on a boat?” Beau doesn’t bother pretending that she’s not relieved to see him. He looks good, and it’s been some time since they were in the same space; his tusks have grown even longer, and Jester has braided his hair, although it’s come undone in the wind.
“Thought you needed some company, and I’m sick of getting jumped every night.”
It’s been a decade and they still haven’t solved the Uk’otoa problem. Beau pinches the bridge of her nose. “Fjord, it’s three in the morning.”
“I know.” He gestures toward the library door. “Come on.”
“I’m not going to hold back,” Beau says. “Fifty push ups, then sprints up the stairs.”
Fjord groans, and pushes her inside. “Fuck you.”
But he’s here, because he knows what she needs, and Beau doesn’t have the words for it, doesn’t know what to say. “I’m going to time you,” she says.
Fjord takes off his hat and rolls his shoulders. “Bring it on.”
They run until they can’t, and when they both collapse at the top of the steps, Beau’s heart hammering a wild roar against her ribs, Fjord reaches out and ruffles her hair. They breathe and breathe and breathe.
On the nights Veth can’t sleep, she walks to the Chateau. The streets of Nicodranas are never truly quiet, but there’s a sleepy stillness to them at the night’s peak; only the occasional person walking the streets, the lamps burning low, the roar of the sea a distant thing.
Tonight, ten years after they saved the world and lived to tell almost no one about it, Jester is waiting for her.
“I can’t sleep,” she says. “I made cocoa.” Her tail flicks out a little nervously, and it’s only because they’ve known each other for so long that Veth can tell that she’s been crying.
“Come on,” Veth says, reaches for her hand. “Let’s have it then.”
They step inside, and Veth is struck as she always is by how much like home this place feels, how safe. There’s Bluud on watch in the corner, sipping tea and reading a novel that Veth suspects may be a romance based on the tiny sliver of the cover she can see and the way he’s hiding it from view when Jester walks in.
Jester goes straight to the bar, where there are two steaming cups of cocoa. She hands one to Veth.
“You can’t sleep either?”
“Nope,” Veth takes a sip. It’s very good cocoa, but she expects nothing but the best from Jester. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Talk about what?”
“Ten years ago today you died and we’ve never talked about it.”
Jester’s tail flicks.
“You don’t have to protect me from it, you know. I was there. I saw it. But also,” Veth takes a breath. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. That’s just also why I couldn’t sleep. And I know you don’t want to talk to anyone else about it.”
Jester swallows hard. She looks down at her coco. “It’s not a big deal.”
Veth rolls her eyes and doesn’t bother dignifying that with a response.
“I think…” Jester takes a shuddering breath. “I think I just want to be sad about it. Just for tonight.”
“Okay.” Veth looks at her friend, older than she should be, still in a way she so rarely lets the world see. “We can be sad.”
On the nights Caduceus can’t sleep, he cleans the graves. It’s good, quiet work, and a bit like gardening. He sweeps moss off of the headstones and ensures the soil around the growing things is moist and well-kept. He remembers each person that he knows, and he says hello to those he does not.
Ten years after he killed a screaming city that he still dreams about, Caduceus cannot sleep, and goes walking.
It’s a quiet night, the kind where Exandria feels like it’s holding its breath, and Caduceus breathes in the scent of rot and flowers and breathes out, forcing the tension in his own shoulders to ease. A breeze tickles the leaves, and the cemetery exhales with him. There are no souls here, but there is a good garden, and the plants have never forgotten how to breathe.
When the breeze stills, Caduceus has half a heartbeat of time before the heat of teleportation magic stings his back. He knows who’s there before he turns around, but he lets them catch their breath before he says, “Are you here to work?”
“Yes,” Eadwulf says quietly, and Caduceus turns around.
Astrid and Eadwulf are standing, hands clasped like school children, tattoos on their arms pulsing with magic. They’re wearing simple robes, the sleeves pushed up for casting, or gardening. The latter is of more immediate importance.
Caduceus notes that they’re both trembling a little, and they have the hollow-eyed tiredness of burnt out mages, the jaw-clenching tension of insomniacs, and the familiar, persistent ache of people who are still learning how to grow.
“That’s great,” Caduceus says. The scream of the city that still haunts him is distant now as the night begins to solidify into something real. He takes a deep breath. There are so many things that need planting, and so many dead things that need tending, and soil that needs to remember how to rot. “Come with me.”
On the nights that Kingsley can’t sleep, he goes climbing. That usually means scaling the mast of Fjord’s ship; he perches in the crows nest and lets the wind take all his screams.
Ten years after he wakes up for the very first time, the boat is docked and there’s nowhere to go, so Kingsley gets drunk and goes dancing.
Nicodranas is so alive, and so warm, and that’s what gets him more than the alcohol. Ten years ago he was so very cold, in strange body with stranger people who held him and loved him and wanted him to be someone else.
Kingsley is cold still, chilled to the bone with sea-spray and salt, and he nicks himself with a blade until he burns up with magic, and drinks until his thoughts are hazy and dances until this body feels like it belongs to him.
He is ten years old. He is certain he has been ten years old before. He is certain he has never been ten years old before quite like this.
When the light is beginning to creep across the sky, Jester’s voice in his head calls him home, and Kingsley goes.
“Hi!” Jester calls when he approaches the Chateau, and throws her arms around him. She holds him tighter than she normally does, nuzzles her chin against the hollow of his throat, and Kingsley swallows hard, knowing that she knows the date, knowing how it hurts her, knowing that there is nothing he can say to make it better.
“Happy Birthday,” Jester whispers in his ear. “Come on, we’ve made cake.”
“We?”
“Well, we ordered a cake.” Jester takes his hand. “Everyone is coming. They’ve had a bit of a rough night, but we wanted to be here.”
Kingsley is still aching from the dancing and the alcohol and the reminder that he’s never quite understood himself and never will, but he lets her lead him inside.
Jester stands on her toes and covers his eyes before they are officially in the door like she hadn’t just told him exactly what was going to happen.
“Jester-“
“Shhh,” she hisses, her teeth catching playfully at his ear. She’s trembling with mischief today, and it’s ridiculous, but he loves her and she needs this so he shuts up.
The door opens and he smells coffee and warm-oven heat and the sweet vanilla scent of cake and Jester’s favorite cinnamon pastries. There’s a chorus of happy birthday’s, and Jester squeals in delight and removes her hands from his eyes.
And there they are: The Mighty Nein: Beau with her arm around Caleb’s shoulders; Fjord with his arms crossed in the corner, leaning against a disguised half-elf that Kingsley knows to be Essek; Veth standing on Caleb’s right holding a cup of coffee; Caduceus towering over most of them, smiling gently at Kingsley like it’s the first time he’s awake; and Yasha standing in front of all of them, holding a cake.
Kingsley takes a breath.
He doesn’t quite know who he is, even after ten years, but he does know one thing: they love him. They love him so much it aches, and that has to be enough.
Yasha comes up to him first.
Kingsley takes the cake from her. “Hello, Love.”
She smiles, and it lights up her whole face. She tugs on one of his horns and kisses his cheek.
“Happy Birthday,” she says quietly, just for him. “I’m glad you found us.”