It was late. Jester came down the stairs to find the common room engulfed in shadows and silence, the last of the patrons having sought their beds hours before and the bar closed down and empty. All the lamps and candles had been extinguished, leaving only the glow of the banked fireplace to shed light and warmth into the room.
The darkness didn't bother her, of course. She had her leggings on under her nightgown and her coat over it; she hadn't wanted to leave the room in only a shift, feeling uncomfortable and exposed whenever she ventured away from the group. But she couldn't sleep, and she didn't want to wake the other girls. They were all tired after the long trip from Shady Run Creek.
She was tired, too. She was so tired, but she couldn't sleep. Didn't want to try any more.
Sketchbook in hand she navigated between the tables to pull up a chair nearest to the fire. A little bit of fussing with the vents fanned the fire up to a low crackle; she might not need the light to make her way around the room, but she could hardly draw by darkvision.
Lately, it seemed like she could hardly draw at all.
She couldn't draw but she didn't want to sleep. She started tracing shapes over the black sketchbook pages, spirals and diamonds and angular arcs that joined into complex webs. Just mindless doodles that filled space and didn't mean anything to anyone.
A thump at the bottom of the stairs drew her attention. For a moment she froze, panic taking over her body like a giant hand clamping down on her, but the fear was dispelled in the next moment when the sound of grumpy Zemnian mumbling drifted across the room to her ears. Her eyes adjusted to the shadow and she saw Caleb trying to navigate the room in the dark, clipping against the edges of the tables as he made his way over to her.
He had pulled his coat on again too; in fact he was still dressed in his coat and holster and trousers, or maybe he'd never taken them off. Jester suspected that he slept in his clothes same as Nott did.
"Hi Caleb," she called out softly as he got near. He stopped in front of the table and gestured towards the other open chair with its back to the fire, a wordless inquiry. "Wanna sit?" she offered.
"Thank you," Caleb said, sat down and cleared his throat. He caught sight of her sketchpad and gestured towards it, tilting his head at an angle to see the page. "May I?"
"If you want," Jester said, tilting the page towards the light so that he could see it. "There's nothing good, though."
"I used to fill the margins of my notes with doodles like those," Caleb commented. "It helped occupy my eyes and hands while listening to lectures that were really, very boring."
Jester frowned. "Yeah, but it's not real drawings."
There hadn't been any real drawings in days. Weeks actually, since the last horrible night in the camp outside Shady Creek Run. Since they'd been freed from the Sour Nest she'd sat every night with her sketchbook open on her lap, and more often than not just closed it without setting pen to paper.
There just wasn't anything that wanted to be drawn. No funny ideas popped into her head, no idle outlines of cute unicorn hamsters moved her hand. She couldn't think of anything and it was so frustrating, because she just wanted to get back to normal. She and the Traveller had talked, he'd reassured her that she hadn't been abandoned. Her friends had come to save them and everybody had been all healed up and everything (except for Molly, poor Molly, but she couldn't think about him right now.) They were safe back in Zadash and even got to sleep in a real bed tonight.
Everything was fine. Why couldn't she draw?
"Is it so important that you create some drawing, that you stay up to try instead of sleeping?" Caleb asked quietly.
She shrugged. "Not really," she said. "I just couldn't sleep."
She hadn't gotten through more than a few more diamonds before Caleb asked, "Jester, are you having nightmares?"
The pencil stilled. Jester stared at the page, unseeing. Where the space was blank the images from her own mind tended to crowd in, threatening to spill over from dreams into the waking world.
"Not really. Why do you ask?" she said, keeping her voice casual. There was a tremor in her voice that gave the lie, though.
Caleb moved his chair a bit so that he was sitting sideways to the fireplace, facing her instead of the table. He clasped his hands in front of him, elbows on knees, and bent to study his hands intently as he said, "What you recently went through… it was a terrible ordeal. Not many people could go through something like that and come through unscathed. You have been trying to put on a brave face and pretend that nothing has changed, but… if you would rather not be brave for just a while, I am here, I would listen."
"Why, though?" Jester asked. "Why talk about it, why bring it back up again? We're in this nice inn in this nice city with this nice fire, why dwell on awful things that are over and done? It's in the past, it's done with, everything's fine now."
"Yes, everything is fine now," Caleb agreed. "That is why you are sitting alone in the dark after nightmares drove you to tears, not able to draw."
Jester flinched. She'd wiped her face before she put on her coat and trousers and come downstairs, but she hadn't been very careful about it and a few traces of tears still lingered. She hadn't been expected anyone to look that close, hadn't expected anyone to ask.
"I am not good with, with this," Caleb said apologetically, making a gesture to encompass the table they both sat at. "With people, and with being… comforting. But I think… I think perhaps I would be able to understand what you are going through more than the others, right now."
"I don't know what you want me to say," Jester said finally, forcing the pencil to move again. Just scratches now, diagonal lines across the margin of the page, that was the only thing she seemed to be able to do. Her voice was as flat, as unwavering as the lines. "They grabbed us off the road in the middle of the night. We were chained hand and foot, it was cold, we were hungry and thirsty and sore. It sucked. Then you came to get us, and it was over. What else is there to say?"
"I think there was more to it than that," Caleb said, his blue eyes glancing up at her with a piercing look. He sat back a bit, rubbing one hand over his beard as he watched her. "Why don't you tell me... the smallest, most petty annoyance that you can remember from that time."
She blinked up at him. "What? What do you mean?"
"When…" He hesitated. "When you are bound like that, and you cannot move even a little... even small things become overwhelming, unbearable, larger than life. A bit of water dripping, a fly buzzing... an itch on the nose..."
The pencil dug into the page, scored a sharp line on the paper and then snapped in her hand as a small shriek of rage tore from her throat. "Oh my God!" She tried to lower her voice so as to not wake up the entire building, but just ended up with something like a scream-whisper. "It drove me CRAZY! The strap on my underwear got twisted around and it was making my thigh itch for DAYS and I COULDN'T SCRATCH IT!"
The sensation came rushing back to her as she put words to it for the first time, and it motivated her to furiously scratch at the offending patch of her leg, if only because she could now. Caleb winced a little. "That sounds awful," he said.
"And, AND!" she went on. "One of the other prisoners there, I guess it wasn't his fault, he had -- he had trouble breathing with the gag in his mouth, but... he kept SNORTING! Every twelve seconds, like clockwork! Wheeze, wheeze, wheeze, SNNOOOORK! I couldn't sleep! I couldn't shut him out! It's a good thing he was tied up on the other side of the cage because if I could have reached him I would have KICKED THE CRAP OUT OF HIM UNTIL HE STOPPED!"
She was not doing a very good job of keeping her voice down. But for once, Caleb didn't seem bothered by her volume or her enthusiasm. "It is probably just as well that you could not."
"I know, I KNOW it wasn't his fault!" she said impatiently, feeling a twinge of nagging guilt for how angry she'd felt. "But it drove me CRAZY! And Lorenzo! UGH! You know what I hated the most about that big fat stupid bastard? It was his big fat stupid laugh! UGH! It was so horrible, every time he chuckled it sounded like he was trying to vomit his lungs out of his big fat stupid mouth!"
Caleb blinked, his head lifting back a bit. "That is a very graphic mental image," he finally managed."
"THANKS!" Jester said, puffing to get her breath back after her outburst. "I had LOTS of time to think about it!"
Now that she'd started talking it all came back, all the fear and helpless rage and the tiny little discomforts amplified by her paralysis into an agony. She hadn't realized until now just how strongly she still felt; she'd kept it walled up and suppressed in her mind until it seemed emotionless, detached and clinical. Until she opened her mouth to talk about it, and then all the feelings came pouring out.
"But the worst thing... the worst..." she found herself saying, then stuttered to a stop. She didn't want to talk about this, she didn't want to remember this, she didn't want to…
Caleb just looked at her and said nothing. She stared at the table, brushing her hand nervously over the torn page of the sketchbook. An orange shape flickered into her line of view and Frumpkin appeared, leaping up onto the table to push his nosy head between her and the sketchbook. She gladly transferred her gaze to him, staring at the darker orange patterns on his back as her hands scratched through his fur.
Looking at Frumpkin instead of anyone else it was easier to go on. "It was… so stupid but I kept... I kept thinking... 'Sooner or later he'll have to let us up, at least for a little while.' At least for a pee break, right? Because everybody has to pee, he has to know that. So I waited and waited... and I waited but he never... he never..."
"I know, Jester," Caleb said.
And she'd never heard him sound so kind, not even to Nott. She started crying, she couldn't help it, the waves traveling outwards from her core until her whole body was shaking. "...And... and I tried to hold it, but it just hurt so bad, and he never let us up, and I cuh -- I nuh -- I couldn't hold it any more and I..."
"I know," Caleb said.
She was sobbing now almost too hard to speak, clutching the fae creature to her in a way that would have been painful for any real cat. "A-a-and I... and I had to lie in it, and and and everybody knew, and he knew and he laughed, and it stank, and I stank, and I..."
It all came crashing back, that horrible horrible feeling, the utter overwhelming mortification that came of having failed to control her own body, as though she had reverted to a toddler that couldn't even keep toilet-training.
Caleb moved, leaning forward again until he was in her space, his forehead nearly bumping against hers. He reached out and laid his hands over hers on Frumpkin's flank, stilling their shaking. "You do not stink now, Jester," he said gently. "A little bath took care of all of that, ja?"
She remembered now how casually she threw that insult at Caleb in the early days, and another sob tore through her at the memory, how loudly she'd announced it to everyone around them. Had she made him feel like this, then? This small, this dirty, this humiliated? She hadn't meant to, she hadn't meant to…
He reached out and folded her in his arms, pulling her head down against his shoulder as his hands wrapped around her back. He didn't stink now, either. Just a little smell of dried sweat and road dust, and some un-masked body odor that didn't smell great, but after days and days in the slave caravan and the Sour Nest she had all new redefined notions for what smelled bad.
When the tears had died down a little bit Caleb sat up a little bit, moving his hand up to her head to stroke her hair carefully. Frumpkin meowed at her and licked her face, sharp rasp driving the new tears away.
"It's so stupid," she said at last, feeling small and foolish and weak. "I'm so sorry."
Caleb moved back enough that she could see the serious expression on his face. "Jester, please, you have to understand," he said. "What was done to you was horrible, it was cruel. But the shame of it is on him. Lorenzo. Lorenzo, and the men and women who followed him, who were… accessories to these heinous acts. Not on you. You are not shamed, do you hear me? You are not made less by this, just because you were the victim of torture."
"Oh -- he didn't --" Jester said, startled, but Caleb interrupted her.
"He did. That's what torture is," he said with firm certainty. "People have the idea that torture involves... brands, and whips, and other exotic things. But when you have someone in your power it's so much more efficient to just..." He stopped, staring off into the far distance. "To deny them the most basic bodily needs, and then just wait. To turn their own bodies against them, so that they become complicit in their own torment."
Complicit. The word rocked into Jester and she shuddered in recognition. Because that was it, that was exactly it. He had made her complicit. He'd made it feel like it was her fault that she hurt, her fault that she was degraded and miserable and humiliated, made her feel that she'd failed or given up or given them something they'd wanted when she couldn't hold out any more.
Which, now that she thought about it like that, it didn't make any sense, did it? She hadn't asked to be ambushed and kidnapped and dragged away and chained up and pushed onto the floor on a cold dark cell, had she? It still felt bad, it felt so bad, but something deep within her uncoiled a bit. She hadn't asked for any of it. It wasn't her fault.
It wasn't her fault.
That realization cleared something in her, some dark shadow under her skin that she hadn't even seen was there until it was gone. She was astonished at how much better she felt.
Caleb was still talking. "Men... people... who are, who are capable of such things, who can inflict such cruelty on helpless people in their power, they are monsters. They are monsters and they deserve to be killed. They will try to make you feel shamed and degraded, but they are the truly disgusting ones."
Now that she felt a little clear-headed, a horrible thought began to nag at her attention. I know, he'd said, and he made it sound like he really did know. "Caleb…" she said, her voice quavering from the aftermath of her crying jag. "How do you know these things? How do you understand so well? Did.... did someone hurt you this way? Make you feel like this?"
For a moment his face crumpled and she surprised a flash of overpowering, terrible grief on his face, before he took and released a shaky breath and it was gone. He looked at her again and shook his head with a small and broken smile, reached out to nudge a curl of hair out of her face. "We are not thinking about me tonight, Jester," he said. "Tonight is about you."
That sounded an awful lot like a yes to Jester; he hadn't said no, and how else could he have known? Jester's heart wrenched, imaging her good friend suffering in the same way she had. They did, didn't they? Oh, poor Caleb, I feel like I understand you better now…
The tears stopped eventually as Jester cried herself out. Without having to be asked Caleb got up and got her a glass of water from somewhere in the taproom, brought it to her to drink. The cool water made her feel a little better, a little calmer. Caleb sat back down in the chair across from her, though he didn't take her hands again.
She set the tin cup on the table and stared into it, hands clasped around the cool metal. "I just feel so pathetic," she said at last. "Fjord went through everything too, and he's not... crying in the night about it."
Caleb shook his head. "Fjord has lived a different life from you, and the life of a sailor is very dirty and difficult in its own ways," he said. "He'll have his own way of dealing with the ordeal, and if I think there is anything I can say that will help him, I will do so.
"But you are, to be honest Jester, you are much more sheltered than either Fjord or Yasha, than any of us," Caleb went on. Jester drooped a little into the table at the words, but they were true. "You have not had to see before now how cruel men can be, and I worry for you.
"I do not want to let this break your spirit, as Lorenzo tried to do. You should not... just ignore it, try to pretend it never happened. It did and it will not ever go away." He laid his hand gently over hers again, rough in bandages edged with soot. "But you can try to focus on the good parts, the happy end, that monster is dead and so are all his disgusting minions, they have all met the ends they deserve."
"I won't!" Jester vowed. "I won't let him get to me! He's dead and I'm not and screw him!"
"That is it exactly!" Caleb cheered her on. "You are strong, Jester, I know you are. You will get through this and leave him behind. And for a man who made himself feel powerful off the helplessness of his victims, that will be the ultimate insult."
"I am trying to be strong," Jester said, and it was the first time since they left Shady Run that she'd admitted I'm trying instead of I'm fine. "I'm trying to put it all behind me, and forget, and be happy and make jokes and smile and..." Her breath snagged in her throat, and she gulped.
"Yes, I have seen you try," Caleb said. "But I think you are not all right just yet. Sometimes, it is okay to put down the burden, to let it rest on other people for a while. We are here for you when you need us." He squeezed her hand. "I am here for you."
"I hope you know that too Caleb," Jester said. "That we want to be there for you when you need us, too."
He was silent for long enough that she looked up at him, trying to read the expression on his face, to see if she could catch another glimpse of that terrible grief. This time though his face was just… blank, until he stirred himself and seemed to remember that he should smile. "Of course," he said.
Another quiet fell between them, but it was warmer now than the silence that had surrounded her when she'd first come downstairs to draw. It didn't feel so empty, didn't feel so alone with her favorite wizard and his adorable kitty here. She was glad he was here, glad that he'd come with the others to get her, glad…
"Caleb?" she said in a small voice.
"Yes?"
She felt another sniffle coming on, though she was sure she'd cried out all the tears she had in her. She stared down at Caleb's hands, his rough and singed fingers against the smooth tabletop. "You killed him, didn't you?" she said. The words hung in the air like smoke. "You made him burn."
She thought she remembered that -- she'd been pretty out of it by that time, weak with hunger and mad with thirst and delirious in the darkness, but she thought she remembered. The flash of light that she'd seen so many times in battle, bright enough to sear her eyes even when they were bound closed. The smell of the magical fire that was not quite like any other kind of fire. The sound of Lorenzo's agonized screams. She wasn't sure whether she had dreamed them or not. Beau and Nott had each recounted the battle afterwards, an excited blow-by-blow monologue of every hit they and Keg and Shakaste had landed (or, in the latter's case, not landed.) But of all the blows exchanged in that fight Jester only wanted to hear about the last.
"Yes," Caleb said, his tone matter-of-fact. "I made him burn from the inside out. And he lived to feel it until the end, until he felt nothing at all, until he was no more than a dirty black smear on the floor of his own dungeon, who can never hurt anyone ever again."
Her eyes blurred with tears again, felt the rush of it in her chest and throat, but mostly what she felt now was gratitude. "Thank you," she whispered. She knew she ought to feel a little bad, that it was ugly to take so much joy in someone else's suffering, but the thing that overpowered every other emotion was just relief that she would never have to face him again, that she would never have to fight him again, and that he would never, ever touch her again. She could live without catharsis -- without the vindication of getting to beat him herself -- so long as she could live without ever seeing him again. "Thank you for coming for me."
She sat up a little. "I'm feeling a lot better now," she said again, her voice closer to normal now. Not quite its usual peppy self, but getting there. "Why don't you go on back to bed Caleb? I think I want to stay up a little longer."
He hesitated, but one way that Caleb had always been different from her was that he didn't usually push people's boundaries, not even for their own good. "If you're sure," he said, and stood back up. He gave her hand one more gentle pat and walked away, stumbling into loose chairs and cursing quietly as he made his way back to the stairs.
She stayed in front of the fire. She didn't really feel like she needed the heat any more, but it gave off enough light for her to see her sketchpad again. She spent a while longer drawing, moving her pencil aimlessly over the paper, lost in thought.
The world had some pretty awful people in it, more awful than she'd ever dreamed in her cloistered life in Nicodranas. She'd never imagined anyone could be as cruel as Lorenzo, or as weak and selfish as the men who'd followed along with him for money. But there were also better people in the world than she ever could have imagined either, living in a world of courtesans and customers. Good people, like Fjord and Molly and Yasha and Beau and Nott and Caleb.
When she looked at her sketchpad again, a new drawing greeted her. It showed Lorenzo, big fat ugly Lorenzo dead on the floor, his arms and legs stubby and charred, his tongue trailing on the ground and X's for eyes. Slowly she began to fill in the space around him with all the people who had been there when he died, who'd been unchained and brought out to walk in the light: herself, Fjord, Yasha, Caleb. She'd put in Nott and Beau and Keg and Shakaste too, if she didn't run out of page space. All of them safe and happy, smiling and laughing, and dancing on the monster's corpse.
Yeah.
This was something she could show the Traveler, for sure. This was good.
~end.